From: nigel@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: Re: Shadowrun: Controlling magicians
Date: 9 Apr 92 05:15:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: rs733.NIGEL.92Apr9001512
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, USA

In article <44489@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> shaman@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Mario Greymist and The Wyrm Oroboros) writes:

>And now for the other side of the coin.  The mighty mageman has had his say.
>From .my. point of view, it's not the mage who's the most powerful -- it's
>the decker.  In 2050 (or 2063), information is the most valuable thing, right?

Half the reason all the deckers in my world are NPCs...as a avid
decker player I can run rampant over any world where the GM gives me a
hot deck.  Eventually someone will kill my character but the havoc a
talented and devious decker can perform is amazing.  The question is
when to quit and disappear...unfortuantely the net is as addictive as
sin...

The final question is just why the VR matrix exists in the first
place?  Certain databases and networks I can understand but "secure"
systems should have no presence on the net...to vulnerable.

Hmmmm...ever rape a corp?  Managed to a couple of times...ordered the
company financial computer to issue a million extra shares and sell to
a rival corp.  Wondered what the SEC stockwatch thought of that...it
was later "fixed" but not until after the hostile corp snatched all
the juicy info in the databanks...the final settlement out of court
was a a buyout of the reamed corp and massive golden parachutes for
the upper echelon.  It was never proven that the massive sellout
wasn't legit since all the protocols according to company charter were
adhered to ...including electronically verfied votes from majority
stockholders authorizing the sale.  The SEC then funded a study for
improving "signature" verification codes...

A slight variant was discovering that a corp had a huge war
chest...initiated a stock buyback at outrageous prices by fooling the
AI watchdog into thinking a hostile takeover was occuring and made a
mint with all the other owners with automatic buy/sell points set into
their accounts.  Totally legit since the AI did all the hard work...so
it was recieving bogus information about stock movement and values...
who's fault is that?  The naivete of some MIS execs amaze me.  Did get
slightly reamed since the SEC "noticed" I picked up a lot of shares
just before this happened...the accounts got frozen but not before I
did an EFT round about and got the money out though various conduits.

Cost me a lot of my preset accounts...about 3 years of gametime work.
I'd say 22.6 million (from 97 mil worth of warchest to owing 200+ mil
in 3 minutes of rigorous trading before stops were applied at the
Stockwatch end...that's what happens when people are in the
loop...gotta call the boss to make sure slamming down the gates wont
cost you your job...) was worth it eh?  Ended up owning lots of pieces
of corps though a ton of holding companies and cut outs...

On the other side of the ticket...most security departments have
gotten the notion that running the security systems off a networked
machine may not be the hottest idea in the world.  No dancing through
the net to tell watchdogs that "these aren't the droids you're looking
for"...

>Oroboros

Nigel
--
Nigel Tzeng
.sig under construction