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Old 03-17-2020, 06:02 AM   #23
The Colonel
 
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Default Re: IN-GAME ONLY: Downloading software illegally

Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
Yes and no.

For software to be used in the field by small squads, having constant and reliable network access is likely not going to be expected. But it will likely phone home periodically (every x minutes/hours), to get updated data or relay progress. It may also increase the possibility of recovering expensive hardware and highly valuable operatives with sensitive knowledge. There's also the possibility of deterring defectors if they know they can be tracked (or even shut down). You could set up some adventure seeds with this.

Any software used in a vehicle could likely be expected to have very frequent (if not constant) communication with a home server. And software used in a military run facility is almost guaranteed to require a constant connection to a specific server cluster.
Wouldn't that put a huge electronic warfare burden on the forces using this sort of software/firmware? Not only is signals silence going to be completely rodgered by its incontinent use of the comms systems, but presumably if you jam it, the user starts being spammed with system errors...


Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
What does 'military grade' mean in this context? Most of the software the military has that's unique to the military is unique because no-one else actually needs that particular capability (unless we're treating the intelligence services as military).
It's a trope for most cyberpunk settings that there is civilian grade operating systems and what have you and military stuff that is full of better. I was thinking that part of the better might be that it doesn't need to be permanently hooked up to the interwebz and what have you, but see above,
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