NinjaPirate

Oh, no, that's cool.

But according to the SR4 setting, not only is your pistol wireless, so are your glasses, your shirt, your socks, your cyberarm, your belt buckle, your watch, possibly even your dog.

Using wireless is good.

Having it used against you is bad.

So any smart runner will limit his exposure to outside hackers.

This is generally done by limiting your wireless connections to a single choke point that's more easily defended, and shut off if necessary.

The default setting assumption, though, is that most people are walking constellations of wireless nodes, any and all of which can be hacked easily by even the basest amateur.




-np

Huh.

Is the OP a refugee from the 80s?

He appears to have gotten his animated GIF avatar and flaming signature image from an amateur 80's era web page.

Black background even!

Hint: There's a lot of anime geeks here that consider anything DBZ or One Piece or the like to be garbage, fit only for young children. They're Serious People.



-np

Heh, true.

My Missions character is an old man, though. Nobody particularly pays attention to what he's wearing. Hell, half the time if he's got his cane out and affecting a limp and palsy, most folks don't even register a threat from him.





-np

There's actually a small mountain of unclear stuff that gets debated endlessly on Dumpshock, but the Edge use was what I remembered as the last big arguement.

"You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score a hit."

This line could be interpreted in two ways:

You may re-roll individual dice that did not score a hit.

or

You may re-roll if entire test did not score any hits.

The "you may re-roll" could apply to EITHER just the failed dice, or the entire test. Either interpretation is technically correct by the rules of English word and grammar usage.

It'd actually be great if Jason could get on the Dumpshock boards, ask them for a list of clarifications that need to be made, and actually UPDATE that damn Shadowrun FAQ that has been in dire need of updating for the longest time.



-np

It can be distinctly a lot less fun if you cannot trust that game mechanics will be consistently applied.

If you have a GM that constantly, arbitrarily alters the game rules at a whim, you end up with players constantly second guessing anything they want to do because they don't know how it will work.

I remember a scientific test with lab rats. If you set a task for them, like navigating a maze, and consistently applied whatever rules you set up for reward and punishment, you ended up with confident mice that eagerly explored and learned any new mazes you presented to them. If, however, you applied the rewards and punishments randomly and arbitrarily, you ended up with neurotic, fearful mice that didn't want to even move too much.

Rules provide an agreed upon framework in which to interact. If you cannot rely on that framework, you inevitably run into problems with trust and fairness.


-np

Plus, you kinda have to be wearing it.



-np

The sad thing is, there was absolutely no good reason Rulk couldn't have been written to be Leonard Samson.

Except they wanted to pull the "we're gonna fool the readers by implying it was Sampson and the have it NOT be him, hur hur" gag.

Or, heck, have it be one of Banner's old split personalities that Sampson had in cold storage that he didn't tell anyone about.



-np

Okay, this is just freaking lame.

What next, replacing the javelins with Nerf darts? Maybe we have the martial arts athletes compete via the Street Fighter game.



-np

That's just it. We ARE talking complete and utter disconnection.

There's ZERO need for your watch, cybereyes, belt buckle, firearm, etc. to HAVE a wireless connection. If it's ON YOUR BODY, why do you need wireless at all to have a piece of gear talk to another piece of gear ten inches away from it?

Smart runners will have ONE wireless connection, their commlink. And not hook it up to anything else they own unless it's absolutely necessary. And be prepared to break it and chuck it in the trash at a moment's notice.

The SR4 setting would have you believe that EVERY DAMN THING in the WORLD is wireless-enabled. It's just silly. At least for the people who make a living engaging in highly illegal activities, or the people that hunt/oppose/fight those people.

The way the SR4 encryption rules work, also, mean that except for the super-ultra-secure black computer systems run by the mega-corps in their super sensitive projects, 99% of the world's networks can be cracked in at most a matter of hours by even the most amateur script kiddy.


-np

Um, they revealed that weeks ago...



-np

A part of whats driving this surge in growth is instability.

The populace of China has never been really particularly wealthy. There are individuals, certainly, but "poor common folk" is a fair assessment of bulk of China's population over the past few hundred years.

Suddenly, we're seeing TONS of folks in China rapidly acquiring money. Only these are folks simply not used to this kind of income level and how to handle it on a long term basis.

Because of the previous relative poverty, there is a very real fear of losing all the new wealth tomorrow. The financial and banking systems in China mostly raw and new and a lot of folks simply don't trust them. The whole system is unstable.

So, like starving men being given a meal, they burn through it all rather than pacing themselves and planning for the long term future.

They spend like crazy and always want their income NOW NOW NOW. Forget lengthy investments, many businessmen in China jump into deals wanting to make as much quick cash as possible in two years or so, and as SOON as the profit from a venture starts to dip they cash out and start another company somewhere. They might buy a factory for a single huge manufacturing order, and when it's done and they don't see more orders immediately incoming, they sell the factory right away, probably to another guy with a big order.

All this breakneck development is fueling a huge surge of growth. Factories, entire cities are going up overnight as everyone wants a piece of the action. With that growth comes a massive increase in resource consumption. Which is great in the short term.

The problem is, it's not sustainable.

The resources will not be able to keep up with demand at the rate things are going.

I point out the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium as endemic of the current state of affairs. It's gorgeous and impressive and they spent a ton of cash to build it. They hoped to impress the world with their creation, both to encourage investment and as a point of pride.

But if you visit the Bird's Nest today, you'll find problems. They used cheap materials to build it, so you find crumbling concrete in places. Paint is peeling away revealing rotting hastily installed plywood instead of proper wall construction. Steel is rusting away due to a lack of protective treatments.

It's a live for today, forget tomorrow attitude.

And there's a real worry that the massive growth represents an economic 'bubble' that when it pops will throw thousands, even millions of companies there into bankruptcy. Which only fuels people to more frenzied money-making as everyone wants to make their profits before it all maybe falls down.

If China can rein it in, start developing real infrastructure and long term planning, there's still time to prevent a crash from happening. The current global economic downturn has help a bit to cool off growth, but it won't last.


The talk about "green" China also kinda makes me roll my eyes. Do folks know HOW many THOUSANDS of coal-burning power plants got built in China in the last 5 years alone? Not a single one with any kind of pollution controls. Ditto with the surge in car ownership.


-np