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JesterX
I'm currently reading "The Wireless World" chapter of SR4.

God do I love the Matrix 2.0 zones!

Especially the Spam Zones! ^_^ I think that we will have a *LOT* of fun roleplaying those!

For those who don't own SR4 yet, they introduced the concept of "zones" in the matrix. Currently, 3 types of zones are described:

-Dead Zones where there is no matrix signals at all...
-Static Zones where the access are intermittent or unreliable
-Spam Zones where you are constantly bombarded by spams of all type

I can easily imagine some kind of twisted corporate security where those zones can be provoked and exploited... ^_^

What do you all think about this?

warrior_allanon
this is why i'm glad my adept is a low tech, he uses his telecom for all his matrix interaction, and a micro-transmitter (Rating 6) for communications otherwise he aint got squat techno wise

hobgoblin
spamtastic...
mintcar
The Wireless chapter has been the best reading in the book. But then again it´s the only one that´s entirely new too.
hobgoblin
hmm, i wonder how a sammie may react if, while he was using his smartlink to line up a shot, he got spamed by a dancing purple and green dino nyahnyah.gif
Aku
singing something about being a big haappy faamily?
Crusher Bob
Heh, imagine spam when you have most of your senses matrix linked... Now, you can feel, smell, and taste your spam too.
prionic6
The book also implied somewhere that spam could make you feel certian emotions if you have a DNI.
Aku
lol, bring porn pop UPs to a WHOLE new level doesnt it?
Ancient History
"To complete your orgasm, please deposit 25 nuyen.gif "
Supercilious
QUOTE (Ancient History)
"To complete your orgasm, please deposit 250(00) nuyen.gif -insert DNI emotional control making them WANT to do it-"

Fixed.
Kagetenshi
The short answer is no, I don't love them. Dead zones make sense but aren't anything special. Static zones are crippled by a name that is only vaguely descriptive, while spam zones… make me angry from the sheer stupidity.

~J
Crusher Bob
Actually, I think of them as a marketing opportunity waiting to happen:

Some corp suit thinks, hmm, we have extrateritoriality, so if we declare war on spammers, it's not felony murder, but a legitimate national secuirty exercise. And our black IC is so hard to test... Reduced cost product testing combinted with a kick ass word of mouth marketing campaign that also reduces the competition? What are we waiting for?
mfb
QUOTE (JesterX)
Especially the Spam Zones!

thanks. (though i'm sure i'm not the only one that came up with the idea.)

QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
while spam zones… make me angry from the sheer stupidity.

howso?
eidolon
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
The short answer is no, I don't love them. Dead zones make sense but aren't anything special. Static zones are crippled by a name that is only vaguely descriptive, while spam zones… make me angry from the sheer stupidity.

~J

Kage, you beat me to it. It almost sounds worth checking out, and then I find out more about the "new" matrix.
mfb
i'm really confused. the zones are one of the things that make solid sense, to me. static zones... what else would you call them? and spam zones--have you ever been to a shopping district in a large city? i can't imagine places like the Strip in Pittsburgh, or Itaewon in Seoul, not flooding any active transciever in range with ads. what am i missing?
blakkie
QUOTE (mfb @ Sep 5 2005, 03:04 PM)
i'm really confused. the zones are one of the things that make solid sense, to me. static zones... what else would you call them? and spam zones--have you ever been to a shopping district in a large city? i can't imagine places like the Strip in Pittsburgh, or Itaewon in Seoul, not flooding any active transciever in range with ads. what am i missing?

u stoopid? wink.gif

Ya, it works for me too. *shrug* I'm not sure exactly what other one word name would work for static zones. Intermittent Zone kinda says the zone is temporary. I guess you could expand it to two words Intermittent Recieption Zone, but that's getting kinda long.
Aku
calling it a splotchy zone? (man could that get awkard in conversations.. "man, me an my girl were out last weekend, and all of a sit i hit this splothcy zone and all drek breaks loose....")
Adarael
Anybody else thinking what I'm thinking? Find a security hole in the usual ad-broadcast protocols in a spam zone, firewall and immunize your computer all to hell, and then load up a frame that triggers every time your computer recieves spam. I dunno, have it broadcast back to the source, gain entry, and crash the spam broadcasting node.

Take security into your own hands. <G>
Kanada Ten
QUOTE (Adarael)
Anybody else thinking what I'm thinking? Find a security hole in the usual ad-broadcast protocols in a spam zone, firewall and immunize your computer all to hell, and then load up a frame that triggers every time your computer recieves spam. I dunno, have it broadcast back to the source, gain entry, and crash the spam broadcasting node.

Take security into your own hands. <G>

I was thinking along those lines. There might be a couple of ways to set up Spam Zones, though. A hired hacker might have subverted nodes to be spam bots, and these would be the easiest to crash or even simply fix. But then again, some places - like Vegas - might have hardwired Spam Nodes, which could be all but impossible to soft hack.
PBTHHHHT
Hmmm... subvert a spam bot in one of the zones to send out an encrypted file within its advertising spiel. Only someone looking for that particular ad at that location and probably timing, with the correct utilities for decryption and voila. An interesting drop/pick up point. Nothing physical and can be hard to track since it's all part of the data flood hounding one's senses.
Siege
Think about the shopping ads from "Minority Report" - same sort of thing.

Amazingly annoying, but plausible - which is a great argument for a modified commlink.

-Siege
kigmatzomat
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
hmm, i wonder how a sammie may react if, while he was using his smartlink to line up a shot, he got spamed by a dancing purple and green dino nyahnyah.gif

Smart 'runners of all types will quickly get the idea of using two Comms. One an off the shelf idiot comm with the public ID/SIN, be it real or fake. A particularly adept individual will have software that emulates the typical communication between inconcealable or typical cyber (e.g. eyes, ears, ec).

The second a secure high-end Comm running in stealth mode with encryption between all devices and an exclusively keyed subscriber list for firearms and cyber.
evil1i
QUOTE (Siege)
Think about the shopping ads from "Minority Report" - same sort of thing.

Especially with AR - as you walk past a shop window all of their specials and deals pop up! I can even imagine someone coming up with disposable "spam bombs" - eg small disposable wireless transmitters with an expendable battery and memory storage all disguised as a soda can. Or even worse could you imagine Coke or Pepsi would love to get some shadowrunners to secrete a few of these spam bombs done up in their competitors cans then when the unsuspecting purchaser opens the can it spams the local area with advertisements for the competitor. And if you have it as destructible memory (they can do it with BTLs in SR3 so they should be able to do it in SR4) then it would be hard to come back at them - have some real cola wars!
morlock76
QUOTE (kigmatzomat)
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Sep 5 2005, 11:37 AM)
hmm, i wonder how a sammie may react if, while he was using his smartlink to line up a shot, he got spamed by a dancing purple and green dino nyahnyah.gif

Smart 'runners of all types will quickly get the idea of using two Comms. One an off the shelf idiot comm with the public ID/SIN, be it real or fake. A particularly adept individual will have software that emulates the typical communication between inconcealable or typical cyber (e.g. eyes, ears, ec).

The second a secure high-end Comm running in stealth mode with encryption between all devices and an exclusively keyed subscriber list for firearms and cyber.

After doing my rading up on the issue in the book, that is the solution I came up with, too.

Given the example #3 on page 210, Bitsy is "hiding in public" and gets in trouble for that. I dont understand why she isnt using a vanilla low lvl com with (fake) ID?

It could be a bit problematic if you get checked out and they find two IDs on you though, much like RL now. One passport is fine, two passports with diffrent names and trouble is your next name.

About SINs there is a part I really love: as used in earlier Editions, you need to answer some questions if the fake ID and verification systems get the same number of hits on the check.
You can just have the relevant parts of your fake ID shown on your VR to make sure you got the right answers ... (yes, that was possible earlier, too, given headmemory and display link and all that, not too commong stuff. Now its way more common)
otaku mike
QUOTE (Crusher Bob @ Sep 5 2005, 04:54 PM)
Heh, imagine spam when you have most of your senses matrix linked...  Now, you can feel, smell, and taste your spam too.

Yeah, and the corpos will be the first to install that as defenses...
Imagine an AR equivalent of a black Ice. You enter the restricted area with your commlink open (oops!) and as the system recognize you as an intruder (because your system doesn't broadcast a registered ID), you get bombarded with a signal that tells to your senses that you are being boiled alive... That must be somewhat... crippling...

I will also allow my players (if I can get some around here one day) to customize their Commlink and PAN, so that other online AR viewer can see special effects swirling around them, or even feel stuff. For instance, I can imagine a Hacker named Iceberg to have a AR blue aura around him, with giant snowflakes slowly falling around him, and when you get close you can actually "feel" a cold wave.

How long before Hackers use AR "spells" like an AR fireball that tells your senses that your flesh is burning? A big fat can of worm here...

Mike
hahnsoo
Nothing to stop the user from shutting off any ASIST signals. In fact, most AR is described as visual/audio primarily, with very little sensorium beyond that (unless you have a touch link, simrig, or sim-module), certainly not enough to overwhelm your senses unless you had specific ware that made you vulnerable. VR is a different story, of course (full ASIST).
hobgoblin
audio/video are our primary senses tho. flood video and the runner cant see a thing. flood audio and he may be screaming in pain soon.
blakkie
So using AR saves them money on speakers, disco balls, and Saturday Night Fever royalties? Only the reciever can turn off?
Siege
Pop-up blockers, anyone?

Considering the number of people who would engage in that sort of spammage, I suspect some bright twit would develop filter controls or a similar means of excluding unwanted AR.

-Siege
apple
You can always choose, who has (legal) access to your PAN.

SYL
mfb
i imagine there are filters. i also imagine that there are ways around filters being developed daily.

AR saves advertisers on more than just speakers and disco balls. it means you don't have to have a physical setup. it means your free samples can cost you next to nothing. it means that interested future consumers don't have to stop and write your number/address down. it means quite a bit.
mmu1
I won't say this sort of thing can't happen (I was inclined to do so, but then thought about all the computers made these days that have physical on/off and reset buttons that fail to work after a software crash, because instead of physically cutting off current they're designed to communicate with the OS), but anyone who relies on their commlink for life and death situations should simply get one with redundant mechanical controls and overrides... Or buy military gear, presumably designed from the ground up with being hacked by the enemy in mind.
Crusher Bob
And built by the lowest bidder...
blakkie
QUOTE (Crusher Bob @ Sep 6 2005, 09:12 AM)
And built by the lowest bidder...

Not always true. Sometimes the spec or confidence in the bidder delivering is part of the bid criteria, which allows corruption to also be involved. wink.gif

QUOTE
AR saves advertisers on more than just speakers and disco balls. it means you don't have to have a physical setup.


Well ya, that's what i was getting at with speakers and disco balls. Let's get phyyysical, get physical! dead.gif
mmu1
QUOTE (Crusher Bob)
And built by the lowest bidder...

...because as we all know, SR characters of any edition simply have no use for military tactical computers, vehicles, drones, weapons, ammo or armor - it's all junk, any fixer can get you something better in a couple of hours.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (mfb @ Sep 5 2005, 02:37 PM)
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
while spam zones… make me angry from the sheer stupidity.

howso?

The short answer: because they're utterly ridiculous.

The reason: as described, they're such a whopping fuckton of a security risk that they would sink the new technology alone. I don't think you're understanding the impact of commlinks running in a mode where by default they're able to open non-requested material. We're not talking web-page popups, because you still requested the original page (virus infestation notwithstanding). We're talking a system in which a commlink that is active but not connected to anything will, apparently, by default connect to any system and display the images, text, etc. that that system wants it to. It's absurd.

I only saw a brief portion of Minority Report, but that was vaguely sensible based on the fact that it was externally generated—it didn't require a computer system more wide-open than a ¥2 whore to implement.

The entire "default state" of commlinks is fucking stupid.

Edit to increase my content-to-vitriol ratio: a thought experiment. Let's imagine a highway on which people are driving manually. Now let's have a spamzone that's configured to fill the FOV with black squares. Have fun.

~J
Serbitar
Have fun with single handedly accepting every piece of AR. Either you have it on or not.
Kagetenshi
That is a reason why AR would not end up the way it is in SR4, not why the commlink would accept anything you throw at it by default.

~J
blakkie
Er, it is exactly like a pop-up if you count the space you are walking through as the page. It is only a security risk if your commlink handshakes anything other than a pop-up ad protocol (EDIT: barring security flaws in that protocol, which the game assumes there is somewhere in the commlink, pop-ups or not). The commlink would have a security onion and these pop-ups would only be allowed inside the outermost layer(s).
hobgoblin
QUOTE (mmu1 @ Sep 6 2005, 04:55 PM)
I was inclined to do so, but then thought about all the computers made these days that have physical on/off and reset buttons that fail to work after a software crash, because instead of physically cutting off current they're designed to communicate with the OS

heh, these soft switches still work. atleast if the motherboard is configures sanely. just hold down the power button for x amount of time (i think 7 seconds is standard on most x86 motherboards) and it should turn of at ones, no matter what state the os and other software is in.

QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Edit to increase my content-to-vitriol ratio: a thought experiment. Let's imagine a highway on which people are driving manually. Now let's have a spamzone that's configured to fill the FOV with black squares. Have fun.


i feel like flagging that as a rant. most likely the spam would be regulated to only have effect on comlinks moving less the x meter pr second or so nyahnyah.gif or have directionaly controled zones that are power limited so that they cant reach any nearby road unless the reciver is using a custom directional antenna. and if that happens i call for a darwin award for the user wink.gif

and take a look at most bluetooth implementations on phones today. there is no way to turn of only part of the functions. you either have to kill the whole system or live with the consequences. given the corp policys of a cyberpunk world its not to far of to expect most of the shelf os's to contain a hardcoded spam port that the user can only disable with either expensive rented security package (that may well be coded to fail on some ads) or by going at it with a low level editor of some sort.
mmu1
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
heh, these soft switches still work. atleast if the motherboard is configures sanely. just hold down the power button for x amount of time (i think 7 seconds is standard on most x86 motherboards) and it should turn of at ones, no matter what state the os and other software is in.

Yeah, well... That's 2.5 combat rounds right there. Might as well be an eternity. wink.gif
hobgoblin
true, its not someting you do in combat.

still, i would mod my comlink so that the battery (or whatever they use) have the quickremoved wink.gif a strip of duct tape can fix a lot nyahnyah.gif
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Sep 6 2005, 03:19 PM)
i feel like flagging that as a rant. most likely the spam would be regulated to only have effect on comlinks moving less the x meter pr second or so nyahnyah.gif or have directionaly controled zones that are power limited so that they cant reach any nearby road unless the reciver is using a custom directional antenna. and if that happens i call for a darwin award for the user wink.gif

You're assuming that this is a "legitimate" zone. If the corps can set the zone up, you can set one up as well, and specifically design to avoid any signal issues. As long as the commlink is taking in the data and displaying it, add one massive pileup and stir.

~J
blakkie
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Sep 6 2005, 03:19 PM)
i feel like flagging that as a rant. most likely the spam would be regulated to only have effect on comlinks moving less the x meter pr second or so nyahnyah.gif or have directionaly controled zones that are power limited so that they cant reach any nearby road unless the reciver is using a custom directional antenna. and if that happens i call for a darwin award for the user wink.gif

You're assuming that this is a "legitimate" zone. If the corps can set the zone up, you can set one up as well, and specifically design to avoid any signal issues. As long as the commlink is taking in the data and displaying it, add one massive pileup and stir.

~J

Yes, you could do shit like that.
Kagetenshi
That is a physical act. It is non-trivial to prevent. In order to allow my proposed scenario you practically have to be trying to create that issue. It requires the default acceptance and display of arbitrary external messages.

I will repeat it again: the only reason why spam zones, as presented, would be able to exist would be due to the complete fucking idiocy of everyone involved in design or purchasing of the new systems.

~J
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Sep 6 2005, 03:19 PM)
i feel like flagging that as a rant. most likely the spam would be regulated to only have effect on comlinks moving less the x meter pr second or so nyahnyah.gif or have directionaly controled zones that are power limited so that they cant reach any nearby road unless the reciver is using a custom directional antenna. and if that happens i call for a darwin award for the user wink.gif

You're assuming that this is a "legitimate" zone. If the corps can set the zone up, you can set one up as well, and specifically design to avoid any signal issues. As long as the commlink is taking in the data and displaying it, add one massive pileup and stir.

~J

sure sure, but then it begs the questions, how strong are publicly sold transmitters?
and how close to the road can you get it?

ok, so you could mod it with a stronger power source or similar to up its range.

but its becoming more and more that its a intentional terror attack or high end punk move rather then a accident waiting to happen.

hell, its kinda similar to kids going up on walk bridges crossing a road and start dropping rocks on passing cars.

basicly something that will hurt the doer as much as those exposed to it as soon as the star, or the relatives of those killed in the pileup, gets hold of them.

to pull something like that of shows atleast the intent to do harm or kill. im guessing jailtime of years if its an adult doing it.

but hey, its bad enough if someone gets a phone call or a text message while driving today nyahnyah.gif
blakkie
*** double post ***
Lindt
*edit*
Foot goes in the mouth.
*end edit*
blakkie
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Sep 6 2005, 02:34 PM)
I will repeat it again: the only reason why spam zones, as presented, would be able to exist would be due to the complete fucking idiocy of everyone involved in design or purchasing of the new systems.

So exactly what part of that are you having a hard time wrapping your head around happening? ohplease.gif

P.S. If you don't allow pop-ups you don't create the environment for ease of use for hard or soft advertising. So yes, there really is motivation for it to be there. EDIT: Not allowing it would be similar to not building any overpasses that someone could walk up on and drop crap off of.
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