| From: | Tzeentch tzeentch666@*********.net |
|---|---|
| Subject: | The Nature of the Matrix [LONG] |
| Date: | Sat, 27 Nov 1999 19:40:55 -0800 |
at
> it. However, you can very easily extrapolate that everything is on the
> Matrix. I don't know if its explicitly stated, but it is referred to
> several times in Shadowbeat, Lone Star, and VR2. Its not that its changing
> in the future, its changing now. What services do you have at home now?
> Cable, phone, Internet, maybe fax? Your fax is already tied to your phone.
> Your Internet is from dial-up (phone company), ISDN (phone company) or
> cable modem (phone company). Your cable company wants to give you phone
> access. ATT wants to sell you the Internet. DSS wants to send the Internet
> and cable to you. All of them want to get in on the cellular. And every
> time that a company buys another one or starts another part of the
> business, it goes into the same pot.
<cough> That's not quite the point I was getting at. It does not matter HOW
interconnected things are. There will naturally be divisions that you will
not be able to easily cross - if not for legal reasons then logistical ones.
The Matrix is not some ethereal "space" where all data kinda moves around
in. It's not an alternate universe or metaplane (unless you play Mage: The
Ascension) that the decker moves around in, plucking data from out of
nowhere. But that is exactly what you seem to be saying.
Let's take current tech to some quite logical extremes (5+ years). All phone
traffic will be moved over to the 'internet', by whatever standard you
define it. I'll define it as all voice traffic will be digitized and routed
as standard. Does this necessarily mean that I'm talking about the internet
we are using right now? No. It could very well mean that the phone companies
set up their own network and decide to use standard protocols for moving the
data around (this is actually not far from what is currently used). Even
though this traffic is standard traffic being passed over the same lines
that you are using for the internet you can't see it.
It could also mean something like Dialpad, which uses the internet backbone
for switching voice traffic onto the standard phone network. From a
technical perspective this is what they use in Shadowrun. I could be on a
satellite modem link in the depths of the Amazon and call my mom in Idaho,
all while surfing for the latest Nine Inch Nails simsense video. We'll
handwave the problems of trying to multiplex datastreams of this calibre,
especially when combined with simsense (1Mp/sec for baseline). It's harder
to justify the actual network that would have to be in place for this,
especially considering the incredibly volatile history of Shadowrun, but
it's just a game.
This does not exactly mean you can just log in and intercept any calls I'm
making, which is what the Tap Commcall system operation would have you
believe. Just because I'm routing my traffic over the internet does NOT mean
you see it. For all intents and purposes unless you were somehow a "man in
the middle" between my system and the phone companies router you would not
even know it exists. And to maintain even a modicum of technical credibility
you would have to agree that routing algorithms in SR would be VERY advanced
to keep network latency down and minimize bandwidth usage.
How it can work though...So you're a man in the middle and while scanning my
ports (or whatever it is you do in SR) you see that the port used for
commcalls (this would be a standard) opens up and you start sniffing traffic
looking for pulses being routed to the commlink centers and you use Commlink
to listen in. That I could see, but not just floating around in the Matrix
from anywhere in the RTG. To top it off I would have to say that all
commlink programs (even those built into phones and the like) would have
some measure of encryption and dataline scanning. Why do I say this? Because
noone in their right mind would trust something as unsecure as what the SR
VR2 book postulates.
You have to pay for the commlink services and it seems reasonable to say
objects will "broadcast" what they are upon connection to the Matrix (ie an
advanced form of Jini lets say). They will also have to have an "address"
for the network so traffic can be routed to them (this wil no doubt be
dynamic much like a badass version of DHCP). And no doubt you will be given
some form of encrypted key when you subscribe to trideo service. When you
jack in you are authenticated, logged (though in the case of deckers this
log will be munged to prevent tracking) and then connected to the Matrix.
When you make a call it takes your key, compares it to the internal database
and if you're on there it charges your account and connects you. It would do
the same thing when you jumped to another LTG. Accessing the latest Combat
Ball broadcast? It uses the same access code, compares it to subscribers for
that service and charges the account if found.
I'm rambling but it all boils down to VERIFICATION. In the base SR books as
presented there is no verification of anything. Shadowbeat (the Holy Book of
Shadowrun IMHO) covers this a bit but not much. At least in CP you pay for
your net service, life in SR is pretty good if no deckers pay for their
service (and I can't see the Corps allowing that).
The little loophole with this is that there HAS to legally be a way for law
enforcement agents to tap your communications. And it WILL be built into the
network. With the breakdown of order in the SR universe you could say Tap
Commlink exploits some bug in the original mechanism that the corps feel is
too expensive to plug anyways (after all they can afford Rating 10
Encryption and Detectors). Not to mention they can exploit it as well. As a
SOTA advancement you can have them start plugging the holes from the old
system (start raising the encryption rating to show the patches being put in
place). That sound ok?
> Its all getting to be digital data. In another 20-30 years it'll be all
> together. With all of that bandwidth, it'll be a lot easier to send it all
> down the same pipe. That's why it'll change in the future. Now you might
> not always see it when you jack into the Matrix. But it will be there as
> data streams going in and out. It'll be there, so you can add more to it.
<shrug> Who built this network anyways? The fiberoptic fairies? Maybe the
immortal elves did it or something or they used magic. It seems pretty
amazing with the general lack of centralized control or reason to upgrade
the network (not to mention the expense!!!) that the Matrix is so drekhot to
begin with! transmitting everything from simsense to live trideo feeds?? To
millions of users all over the world at incredible speeds with no
congestion? Now THAT is magic chummers.
And again, the matrix is not some astral plane that data travels through and
your decker is not moving "anywhere" to see the data transmissions. If the
site you are looking to hack into makes a satellite connection to a
satellite you will NOT see a light streak off into the heavens unless they
explicitly set it up to broadcast that on the normal Matrix. If you float
over to someone's net construct (their "web page") you probably will not see
much - you won't see other deckers unless they want to be seen and you won't
see anything coming out of the construct unless its set up that way or you
hack into it. You can't see the other people connected to a website can you.
Even if it;s some super-duper VRML representation (which is what you could
say the Matrix is) you won't see them unless they *want* to be seen - ie
explicitly make an avatar visible or what. Why wouldn't you see every Tom
and Marsha zipping around the Matrix? Because you would not be able to tell
what the hell was going on. Imagine being in a major metropolitan area with
MILLIONS of active users. The entire area would be wall to wall icons and
you would not be able to get anything done. Public areas yes, most people
would be "visible" if just to show off. I would HIGHLY suggest checking out
Tad Williams Otherworld books (specifically the first one) for how I could
see this working.
> There wouldn't be any dial-ups because the phone would access the same
data
> streams as the computer. The fax machine goes over the lines also. There's
> no reason to hook up the coffeemaker, although they will be offered in the
> so-called "smart homes" that MS envisions, and people have been talking
> about for years.
What? You're thinking the Matrix is like an data astral plane again. The
phone would access the same network as what the computer used but it's not
the same as saying the same datastream or port. I'm not sure how I can
better describe this but if I make a dialup connection to a Matrix system
unless you physically cut the lines from the actual servers you could not
stop me, I would be connecting to a port you would not even "see" on the
Matrix. It would be just another person using Make Commcall that you would
have to someone figure out he was connecting to the system in question
(probably by monitoring the commcall access ports if you had them - but that
goes back to the above discussion).
> See VR2 pages 116 for Make Comcall and pg 118 for Tap Comcall. System
> operations you use to make calls directly from your deck and to tap into
> existing calls. You have to find the particular call you want, but you can
> do it.
I covered this above, be nice if they said how much a passcode for a Comcall
license was or what you could actually do with it!! As given the Make
Commcall function is pretty lame and time consuming. Not to mention I doubt
the RTG controllers would be happy about having people making free calls
through "their" RTGs. But that's not touched on so I'll ignore it ;)
> If you have the hardware and software (like the phone company does) you
can
> see all of the data moving over the lines. Its all just ones and zeroes.
Well yes and no. It's all ones and zeros but not necessarily in an order or
in a place where you can get to them. A decker is an OBSERVER. Everything he
does is client-side except when he requests services from other computers.
Which is why I have a problem with some of the Sensor rules, which presume
the "data astral space". Whoever he connects to for his Matrix service is
the one routing data to the decker, they will be throwing out data not
routed to a user on their network or that they don't recognize (the whole
Matrix idea supposes some data is "global" - ie Matrix geography updates and
public broadcasts onto the Matrix (I imagine being a spammer in SR is a
pretty serious thing since EVERYONE on the LTG could be affected by what you
send out).
Look at this way (incredibly simplified)...Company A has a remote
observation platform that they receive telemetry from. It's not important
enough o warrant a direct link so it's uses COTs cellular technology to
transfer the info over the Matrix. All of it's data is routed to the
companies local office where it goes into their private network. This data
is not "broadcasted" onto the Matrix and is one way for the most part (and
the commands it does accept are probably proprietary and not expansive
enough to allow "hacking" it. Would Joe Decker "see" this traffic
going into
the Company A building? You might say yes but I would say "no". In fact
unless you had inside knowledge there would be no way for you to easily see
what was going on with this platform. The data packets are routed to Company
A so your service provider would throw them out once it hit THEIR servers.
You would not even see the packets so you could not sniff them. The
connection would not necessarily be a standard commlink connection (it uses
it's own port to talk to the computer there) and would EASILY be secured via
even simple encryption.
The only way you would be able to find out about the platforms data would be
to either hack the Company A building and get the data as it comes in (by
checking out the slave nodes) or hack into the routers "upstream" of where
you are so you could possibly sniff its traffic (assuming you knew its net
id code).
> One of the first things the decker would want to do is ba able to access
> all of that data. Its all going over the same lines, going through the
same
> routers. You're not going to see cable lines running around, just the data
> flowing in and out.
Err, no. It's not all going through the same routers etc etc. You don't see
all the traffic on todays internet and you sure won't see it in the future.
The bandwidth required and wasted resources would be simply astronomical.
>And since they are on the same lines, you don't need to
> differentiate them. Make a smart frame that sends out phone calls every
> second to every public number in the Pyramid (to carry the example). Also
> have it send out emails to all public addresses. Those junctions lines are
> going to get saturated pretty quick.
Well since your frame has to have some sort of ID to even make the call to
begin with I'm assuming they would quickly "killfile" all calls from a
certain access number and request the trid companies invalidate that access
code (and then trace that access code).
And who says you can make infinite calls from one number?
> The Matrix is just a way to interpret the way that all of this data is
> flowing around over the same lines. Maybe its because he was really good
at
> predicting the ways it would develop?
Hah. Gibson did not even know anything about computers at the time. I love
the stories but that does not mean that his "consensual hallucination" has
much grounding in reality any more then warp drives or blaster pistols.
Can I see a really advanced VR? Sort of, it's not entirely logical. After
all, can you just imagine what a productivity sink the Matrix would be? I'd
get nothing done at work if I could jack in and get a body massage from
Jennifer Love Hewitt clones!! Not to mention many task would take needless
amounts of time if you had to virtually perform actions to do them. Then we
get into the whole Black ICE boondoggle and why a decker REALLY gets a
"reaction" bonus for having his simsense turned up yadda yadda.
> You don't necessarily have to max out the mainframe to shut everything
> down. Just certain chokepoints. How much traffic can the routers handle?
> How many times does the phone have to ring with no-one there before the
> sariman don't get anything done? All you have to do is make it too
> difficult for them to accomplish their regular work and you've cost them
> millions.
If they can't ban and trace all the nasty hackers doing this, and supposing
its that simple then noone would get anything done on the Matrix. Every
Shadowrun script-kiddie would be killing every single Matrix site out there.
They would download BackOrifice Frame 6.0 and proceed to kill as many
companies networks as they could. We can safely assume it's not all that
easy (for unexplained reasons) just for sanities sake.
> As to why they don't do it to each other all the time, that's easy. They
> have to work together to get stuff done. No matter how big you are, there
> is still stuff to be sold to someone else. A group of deckers could do it
> because they don't have to work with the corps if they don't want to.
Which means all the script-kiddies of 2060 (and Otaku) would be a serious
pain in the hoop assuming it could be done. And are you seriously saying
Aztechnology would not use every underhanded dirty trick it could to bring
down its competition, even if it meant short term losses?
> I'm not sure that the whole concept of decking with the iconography would
> be that beneficial, but I can see it enough to suspend my disbelief. Black
> IC is actually a logical extension of that system. If you have a direct
> connection between your brain and the computer, if the system could take
> over your deck it could easily command it to send commands to your brain
to
> give you seizures and kill you. Smoke isn't going to come out of your
ears,
> but it'll still fry your gray matter.
That by itself stretches logic to the ultimate breaking point. Instead of
transmitting actual simsense data wouldn't it be a LOT easier and safer (not
to mention more efficient) to simply send small packets that trigger preset
"sensations" on your deck? If you wanted additional sensations or enhanced
"resolution" or whatever you would get a "plug-in" to handle it. If I
wanted
to visit the Jennifer Love Hewitt Love Shak I would download the special
plugins and sensations for it, or open a direct simsense link. I would not
have an open link all the time - I can't see anyone being that dumb or you'd
have the equivalent of "drive-bys" on the Matrix.
At least (thank the gods) we don't have crap like "Zombie" and
"Firestarter"
in Shadowrun <insert puking sounds>.
Interesting discussion though, hope I'm getting something of my opinion on
the matter across :))
Kenneth
> Sommers
> Insert witty quote here.
