Cortical stacks are terrible backups.

Thu, 2012-11-08 04:26

#2

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

100% agree. My character has

100% agree. My character has one only because it was a pre-req for the multitasking implant. Stuck a Dead Switch on it. He just regularly evacuates his synthmorph cyberbrain as an infomorph backup and encrypts it. It's a much better solution.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Thu, 2012-11-08 04:54

#3

Patrick Northedgers Patrick Northedgers's picture

Your asessment is correct

Your asessment is correct - that is why an independent institution of backup is used, and cortical stacks retrieval is rarely included in any insurance. Additionally, it would be logical to make cortical stacks configurable (considering you can alter nearly any design, an option to configure stack software should be available) to make backups at longer intervals - 10 seconds or a minute would be reasonable.

—

"Normal" does not exist anymore. I consider it a good symptom, though.

Thu, 2012-11-08 09:02

#4

Lilith

Cthuluzord's Know Evil

Cthuluzord's Know Evil campaign touches on the vulnerability of cortical stacks. It's one of the reasons why the Know Evil infection itself is so horrifying.

Thu, 2012-11-08 09:22

#5

Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture

Simulationism is fine, but I

Simulationism is fine, but I just assumed the game side of this said: 'the cortical stack backup is never accidentally corrupted'. How it manages this, we don't know (possibly by, yes, using multiple backups in the production of that one good one). As noted, you do have longer-interval backups… in other locations. Just not the stack. :/ The other problem is that 1 sec is both way, way too slow, and (as you said), way too fast. *shrug* Most of EP stops working if you look too close. Don't. :D

Thu, 2012-11-08 10:03

#6

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

The cortical stack was

The cortical stack was developed before the existence of the titan viruses. Considering how little transhumans understand them, saying they are defenseless against them is an understatement. Pay the extra costs needed for extra backups. The cortical stack was meant to be a defense against accidental death such as from a car accident, biological defect such as a heart problem, or against deliberate death such as being killed by a bullet. I'm sure the device has some form of redundancy to protect against unwanted changes to brain states, such as against lobotomy caused by a bullet. Even if such damage did make it through to the "good backup", with the availability of psycho-surgery and backup facilities, it would be possible to edit your backup file and repair such damage. If not, one might be able to extract xp files from the backup.

Thu, 2012-11-08 18:07

#7

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

I like it.

I like it. We're talking about a game where you can't completely die, and all damage can be fixed with trivial effort compared to most settings and RL. There needs to be consequenses for failure to have any type of plot in a story and a bad backup/loss of data is one of those. I don't think this makes the game broken I think it makes the game better. Eutopia sux as a roleplay setting.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2012-11-08 18:21

#8

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

OneTrikPony wrote:I like it.

OneTrikPony wrote:
I like it. We're talking about a game where you can't completely die, and all damage can be fixed with trivial effort compared to most settings and RL. There needs to be consequenses for failure to have any type of plot in a story and a bad backup/loss of data is one of those. I don't think this makes the game broken I think it makes the game better. Eutopia sux as a roleplay setting.

It's really unbelievablely easy to engineer around that limitation, so you have to ask why it hasn't been done. In an automated fashion: 1. First install a cyberbrain *and* a meat brain connected to your cortical stack. 2. Every second copy to the cortical stack. Then, copy your stack to the synthmorph cyberbrain. 3. Evacuate as an infomorph from the cyberbrain to a computer with lots of storage. 4. Turn off informorph and encrypt/compress/archive. You would have a full digital backup every 16 seconds or so (3 Action Turns to reboot cyberbrain, 1 Action Turn to evacuate as Infomorph). If you bridged to your multi-tasking implant, which is already running forks of you, I'd imagine you could cut out the cyberbrain middleman. In short, cortical stacks as is are very sub-par. Realistically the customer would expect and demand something better.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Thu, 2012-11-08 19:40

#9

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

I agree. I demand Ferrari

I agree. I demand Ferrari build me a pickup truck to use at work. Instead of getting tangled up in my lanyard all the time I demand that all people on a jobsite be issued jetpacks for fall protection. :D Occasionally my want's exceed my means. In addition to an extra cyber brain, and Lot's of private storage space I would also demand; 3.5 VPN pipe to my offline storage space 3.6 Quantum encryption for uploading my 83000 archived backups each day. 3.7 infrastructure dedicated to archiving the backups of myself because having my stack backup corrupted by getting shot in the head does not happen to me as often as tripping into a SPAM zone. Alternately I guess I could keep my ofline storage inside my morph but that might be bad if I get shot somewhere besides either of my two brains. :D The optimism of engineers about the ruggedness of increasingly complex solutions to simple problems never ceases to amuse me.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2012-11-08 21:58

#10

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

pg 24 of the 3rd printing:

pg 24 of the 3rd printing: "This ubiquitous computing environment is made possible thanks to advanced computer and nanofabrication technologies that allow unlimited data storage and near-instantaneous transmission capacities." You can run your EP universe how you want; you don't have to follow the book(s) on how the universe is. [i]Especially[/i] if you know it will be more fun for you players. If you take everything in the books and change nothing, there's inconsistencies. Some people have more fun if those inconsistencies are removed in their EP universe. OneTrikPony - re: rest of your post - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_argument Personal augmentations in EP are automatically networked if you choose, no engineering is required.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Thu, 2012-11-08 22:29

#11

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Huh? you lost me.

Huh? you lost me. Are you really saying adding an extra cyber brain fixes the "problem" of not having access to an archive of backup states? I don't believe that you believe that this can be done with no dedicated infrastructure. So, where's that pesky straw man? On the flip side; being able to imagine a complex, setting-based solution to a perceived problem in the setting does not always mean that setting is inconsistent. Its also possible to imagine some iniquity in fictional technology that allows the setting to be sub-optimal for it's denizens. However; you can run your EP universe how you want; if the books don't supply an answer to every question you have, feel free to make it up for yourself. Especially if that will make it more fun for you. :)

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2012-11-08 23:04

#12

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Bandwidth measured in about

Bandwidth measured in about an ego per second. The RAM to storage ratio is 1:64 on my smartphone. An ecto is a clear analog to a smartphone that can run an ego on it. So reasonably if an ecto was half full of "stuff" that would leave room for like 32 ego files (uncompressed). Assume a 2:1 compression and we're up to 64. I can buy a portable hard drive with 100 times the storage of my phone for much cheaper than the phone. Cool, we're at 6400 ego files. And then you have data sizes of yottabytes (that's about 100 million egos worth) being thrown around in Gatecrashing. That's for one gate address. EP makes it clear wireless bandwidth is massive and plentiful. No dedicated infrastructure. You really can store your ego file on your cousin's servitor bot's spare space for free. And if you really did need more bandwidth, you get the 25 credit a month fiber to your apartment dealio. It won't break the bank. Your bandwidth would jump to like 30 egos per second. EDIT: Yottabyte is 100 million egos, not 1000. Oops.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Thu, 2012-11-08 23:35

#13

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Where does it talk about

Where does it talk about bandwidth in hard numbers? And it's not going to that high, remember that egocasts are bandwidth hogs (as stated in the description for the emergency farcaster).

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Fri, 2012-11-09 00:30

#14

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

LOL! Probably shouldn't reply

LOL! Probably shouldn't reply to this but i'm having fun. bandwidth an ego / second? Guessing this is based on the idea that the cortical stack updates every second? That probably doesn't equal 1 ego. And while I'm pretty sure there is bandwidth available in most mesh systems with thousands of members to carry updated brain states I'm skeptical that it will carry enough for each member to update with a 1 second frequency. Pretty sure that ecto's can't run egos, Because that would create a huge "inconsistency" in the setting called cyber brains. :) It would also make inserts into cyberbrains. But the good new is that; at least now, every one has two brains! Score :D Also: Where is the number for bytes/ego? And how much of that ego needs to be recorded per update? Regardless: my argument is against the circular logic that people who are deathly afraid of not having access to an archive of clean backups on the off chance that thier stack backup may write bad data for some rare and dangerous reason... DO Not store their ego on their cousin's servitor bot, and do not broadcast their ego across the public mesh. LOL If every mesh node is tied up by running a secure, quantum encrypted VPN then that kinda breaks the idea of mesh networking. If everyone is packing around a storage device to hold their archived backup library then... never mind. Anywho; It's in the book p.330 a backup costs [moderate] Done. Does everyone do it. Nope cause it costs a lot to make it secure otherwise it breaks the mesh and writing bad data to a stack is a mature tech that doesn't fail often enough to worry about. what really makes me laugh is that ALL of this discussion kind of misses it's own internal inconsistency which is; if a stack works as has been assumed in this thread then why do biomorphs need egobridges to backup? :D

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Fri, 2012-11-09 00:44

#15

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

How is it that stacks are

How is it that stacks are being assumed to work in this thread? Flood brain with nanobots, record position of braincells and other such data every second, if accident happens then pop stack and use that to resleeve the person. it says that in the book, how can you misunderstand that? And I would assume that they planned around the "bullet blender" issue happening: those nanobots are everywhere in your brain, so if something comes in there, they stop recording cause of scrambled neurons and unwanted stuff being in the brain case. Ta-Da! (totes pulled an Eclair there...) Resleeving needs the egobridge for wet-printing the neurons of biomorph brains, and part of it involves checking data integrity. So much stuff that gets asked cause people apparently missed Reading Comprehension 097...

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Fri, 2012-11-09 00:52

#16

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

RustedPantheress wrote:Where

RustedPantheress wrote:
Where does it talk about bandwidth in hard numbers? And it's not going to that high, remember that egocasts are bandwidth hogs (as stated in the description for the emergency farcaster).

That's a quantum radio farcaster. It is designed to only transmit to other farcasters it has been entangled with (which requires actual transfer of entangled particles). So this isn't over the mesh per se, but a private mesh (or even point to point). Ergo far far less bandwidth as it actually has to punch through long range and deal with all the regular mesh interference. They don't say how strong the radio signal is but I assume it is probably as strong as the radio booster at least.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Fri, 2012-11-09 01:29

#17

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

RustedPantheress wrote:How is

RustedPantheress wrote:
How is it that stacks are being assumed to work in this thread? Flood brain with nanobots, record position of braincells and other such data every second, if accident happens then pop stack and use that to resleeve the person. it says that in the book, how can you misunderstand that? Resleeving needs the egobridge for wet-printing the neurons of biomorph brains, and part of it involves checking data integrity.

Right, To [u]resleeve[/u] into a biomorph an ego bridge is required to write the ego into the new wetware. Also an ego can be reinstanced from the stack. But why is an ego bridge used for backup uploading? If the recording systems of the cortical stack are already in the brain then why do ego bridges exist? What do they do that a stack can't? If you write a complete brain state to a stack every second why does it take an ego bridge 10 minutes to scan a brain? There are other questions that require the player to to make explanations; Why can you transfer an ego from a cyber brain over the mesh, but not a bio-brain, given the presence of all the recording gear required to make a stack work? Why would a stack only hold one instance of a backup instead of archiving the way the OP, sensibly, conjectured it should? Instead of installing an extra cyber brain and transmitting your archived clean egos to your cousins servitor bot over the mesh, why not just install several stacks and update them at non sequential intervals? ;) Either a major pillar of the setting is irrational or there are reasons for the limitations of the technology. Backup complications (p 270) happen, sometimes exactly as the OP suggested. And has also been suggested, if there were a simple, cheap fix it wouldn't be an issue.

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Fri, 2012-11-09 01:57

#18

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

OneTrikPony wrote

OneTrikPony wrote:
RustedPantheress wrote:
How is it that stacks are being assumed to work in this thread? Flood brain with nanobots, record position of braincells and other such data every second, if accident happens then pop stack and use that to resleeve the person. it says that in the book, how can you misunderstand that? Resleeving needs the egobridge for wet-printing the neurons of biomorph brains, and part of it involves checking data integrity.
Right, To [u]resleeve[/u] into a biomorph an ego bridge is required to write the ego into the new wetware. Also an ego can be reinstanced from the stack. But why is an ego bridge used for backup uploading? If the recording systems of the cortical stack are already in the brain then why do ego bridges exist? What do they do that a stack can't? If you write a complete brain state to a stack every second why does it take an ego bridge 10 minutes to scan a brain?

Cortical stacks are not able to be accessed, for security reasons. You literally have to pop them out and stick them in an ego bridge to be read. I would say that a stack does not do any real data integrity checking, and is somewhat prone to corruption (5% of the time, maybe?). I would also rule that reinstancing from a stack always requires a LUC check (which is technically already called for in the rules, because stacks are there for case of death.) Using an egobridge allows for data integrity checking, and I think that it also provides a higher quality of backup.

Quote:
There are other questions that require the player to to make explanations; Why can you transfer an ego from a cyber brain over the mesh, but not a bio-brain, given the presence of all the recording gear required to make a stack work?

Because you cannot access the frigging thing and the recording equipment only routes to the stack. It's pretty much hardwired in.

Quote:
Why would a stack only hold one instance of a backup instead of archiving the way the OP, sensibly, conjectured it should?

Cause the designers are, presumably, not tech people.

Quote:
Instead of installing an extra cyber brain and transmitting your archived clean egos to your cousins servitor bot over the mesh, why not just install several stacks and update them at non sequential intervals? ;)

Which stack do you use then?

Quote:
Either a major pillar of the setting is irrational or there are reasons for the limitations of the technology. Backup complications (p 270) happen, sometimes exactly as the OP suggested. And has also been suggested, if there were a simple, cheap fix it wouldn't be an issue.

I dunno, maybe it's souls at work here, frakking up all the stuff. That's my call.

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Fri, 2012-11-09 02:27

#19

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

What about the Multiple

What about the Multiple Personalities augmentation? Two egos can both back up to the same stack. Huh?! The easiest solution is to just have the cortical stack not suck. Say by default it has snapshots going back 1 second, 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 8 seconds etc. all the way back to 6 months. Or any other way you'd like it to have programmed erasures. Assume the snapshots aren't full, but actually just a record of the changes. You can roll back to any one you wish. A full actual snapshot the first time you're sleeved takes the 10 minutes. The diffs take less than a second, usually, after that first full write. Eclipse Phase ripped the cortical stack off of the Altered Carbon novels, warts and all, down to the 48 hour schedule for the emergency farcaster.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Fri, 2012-11-09 06:38

#20

Skimble

Ectos *can* run egos

EP p247 PERSONAL COMPUTERS Personal computers account for a wide range of computer types, but essentially include anything that has the capabilities evolved from generations of personal computers to meet an everyday user’s needs. Most personal computers are portable and tailored for use by multiple users at a time. Personal computers may run one AI or infomorph at a time. They may not run simulspace programs. Common personal computers include: mesh inserts, ectos, and vehicles. Cyberbrains are specialised computers that map inputs/outputs to the physicality of a synthetic or pod body. Otherwise they are identical to any other personal computer. As has been stated before me, Cortical Stacks do require an Ego Bridge to extract the ego. There's one exception in the form of the Spare (Gatecrashing), which can run the ego directly from the cortical stack. I presume this is due to specialised nanotech in the Spare which essentially acts like an ego bridge to allow the ego to be extracted and run on the Spare's cyberbrain. I would imagine that similar technology could be fitted to other morphs but isn't as a matter of convention to avoid potential security issues.

Fri, 2012-11-09 06:48

#21

Skimble

Why Cortical Stacks don't have multiple backups

Has it occurred to any of you that one reason Cortical Stacks only have one backup is due to the taboo that exists in much of the EP setting towards forking? If you have multiple copies of your ego on your stack then that's multiple, slightly different copies of you from a week, a day, a month ago or whatever. People would probably be squeamish about the possibility of getting the wrong one restored and that's without any legal implications in the Inner Planets. I suspect that much of transhumanity has ONE backup copy of their ego with their backup insurance company and then their stack. If the stack is irrecoverable or corrupted then they hope to be restored by their insurance company. If the insured copy turns out to be corrupted, well they've pretty much had it. I realise that player characters tend to make rather more copies/forks of themselves, but perhaps that's because they aren't steeped in the same fork-averse society that most Transhumans exist within?

Fri, 2012-11-09 15:15

#22

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Skimble wrote:I realise that

Skimble wrote:
I realise that player characters tend to make rather more copies/forks of themselves, but perhaps that's because they aren't steeped in the same fork-averse society that most Transhumans exist within?

Well, actually they are, but players forget that and just fork off like there's no tomorrow. And when I say "forget", what I really mean is "I'm going to ignore the setting and take maximum advantage of the rules."

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Fri, 2012-11-09 15:40

#23

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

RustedPantheress wrote:

RustedPantheress wrote:
Well, actually they are, but players forget that and just fork off like there's no tomorrow. And when I say "forget", what I really mean is "I'm going to ignore the setting and take maximum advantage of the rules."

I disagree. It's a part of the default setting. Read up on the Pax Familae. Or what Zevi Oaxaca-Maartens did: "All of the Oaxaca-Maartens enterprises rely heavily on AIs, AGIs, and infugee indentures for labor. Zevi himself pioneered the now-illegal technique of indenturing an ego to do administrative work in an office simulspace for three years, then running an arbitrary number of forks of the person (the record was 103 simultaneous instances for one worker) and merging them at the end of the contract. Most would agree the settlement money received by the victims did not go far enough." Forking an arbitrarily huge number of beta forks of yourself is perfectly legal in Planetary Consortium jurisdiction (and Lunar LaGrange, Morningstar Constellation etc.), and standard operating procedure for many hypercorps (watch the 4 hour limit on Beta forks). You get into Extropian habs and it is lauded as clever management. Autonomists don't care unless they start getting confused about which Alpha is which, at which point they'll bomb your rep. There's no reason just a social taboo would limit a technology (especially one where nobody would know you're using it). It would have to be a legal barrier, and it is clear there really aren't any in Autonomist and Extropian areas, and even Planetary Consortium is pretty lax as long as you're just engaging in fork abuse of your own forks. P.S. Change the default setting to your taste if you don't like the default. EDIT: From Forking and Merging, fork abuse is equated with alcoholism or drug abuse in terms of social distaste due to the psychological consequences. "Most significantly, though, running a short-term fork of oneself for periods of an hour or less is an easy task for many transhumans. Many people use forks of themselves to get work done in everyday life, and almost everyone has at least experimented with forking at some point. Transhumans view forking a bit like early 21st-century humans viewed drinking and drug use. A bit might be okay, but someone overdoing it will be stigmatized. This is because most transhumans understand the psychological consequences of overusing forks."

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Sat, 2012-11-10 02:06

#24

Thampsan

I am a little late to this

I am a little late to this discussion, but the op posted quite a few interesting things to consider. Kudos to him, the criticisms are absolutely valid. My counter suggestion for backup is this though; I think we can imagine that the decent sized diamond-lattice matrix embedded in your neck/cranium probably has the potential for computing power at least equal to a few ectos, if not more given it's size and density. But all it is being used for currently is storage - that's a lot of wasted potential. Why would it not have some sort of smart-software embedded on there that does it's best to avoid saving corrupted files so as to preserve continuity? Shot in the head or dying of an embolism, chances are because onboard software would detect medical abnormalities it would have stopped accepting those particular gross-overview snapshots of the ego when they occurred. That doesn't mean it stops recording, rather perhaps when it detects notable abnormalities it ignores corrupted sectors and saves only the thing that matches the within the baseline of the person. It likely wouldn't be able to detect subtle infection by the exsurgency virus in order to stop it - unless it was perhaps a known form of the virus. But bullets to the skull, death via lack of oxygen or blunt force trauma, and a whole host of other physical death parameters would probably be calculated in. So post-death you would reinstantiate likely with your final horrified memories of what killed you, but with none of the accompanying scrambled mess of grey matter and neurological damage. Of course the other option is that the cortical stack could do this post-death and simply keeps a buffer-period of snapshots and then neatly edits the most viable combination together for when your stack gets retrieved.

Sat, 2012-11-10 16:51

#25

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

Holy shi...take mushrooms,

Holy shi...take mushrooms, that works. And it doesn't change the setting that much.

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Sat, 2012-11-10 17:10

#26

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

I would program my stack so

I would program my stack so it replaces the last nasty bits with a pixelated GAME OVER And then it would score a bunch of things I've done since last reinstantiation like a high score: Poached eggs eaten: 512 Unique Lawyer's You Assaulted: 7 Lawyer's Assaulted counting forks: 12 etc. Finalizing with a YOU WIN, no matter what the score. Then a WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY AGAIN Y/N? Whomever reloads my stack can get the Y/N answer on whether I want to come back. I'd probably throw in a few "Are you sure?" prompts in case I miss my click. Man, wouldn't that suck if you missed that click and didn't get an "Are you sure?" backup prompt.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Sat, 2012-11-10 17:28

#27

RustedPantheress RustedPantheress's picture

When resleeved your scores

When resleeved your scores are uploaded to the mesh. If you do well enough, you'll even get on the top 10 list!

—

Somebody is using bad science! Snark, facts, snark. Your body is corrupted: Cool, do more science to it. Your mind is warped: That's nice, want a cookie? What do we say to the God of Death? Not today!

Sat, 2012-11-10 21:19

#28

Thampsan

EGG-sactly @NewtonPulsifer,

EGG-sactly @NewtonPulsifer, there is no reason that some cortical stacks wouldn't come with rebindable displays like that to help soften up the impact of death. I imagine with an Oracle compatible software package I imagine it would probably offer you compact memory snap shots of all the relevant and interesting things that happened prior to death to help keep you focused on whatever goal you were chasing after when you died.

Sat, 2012-11-10 23:25

#29

OpsCon

Thampsan wrote:I am a little

Thampsan wrote:
I am a little late to this discussion, but the op posted quite a few interesting things to consider. Kudos to him, the criticisms are absolutely valid. My counter suggestion for backup is this though; I think we can imagine that the decent sized diamond-lattice matrix embedded in your neck/cranium probably has the potential for computing power at least equal to a few ectos, if not more given it's size and density. But all it is being used for currently is storage - that's a lot of wasted potential. Why would it not have some sort of smart-software embedded on there that does it's best to avoid saving corrupted files so as to preserve continuity? Shot in the head or dying of an embolism, chances are because onboard software would detect medical abnormalities it would have stopped accepting those particular gross-overview snapshots of the ego when they occurred.

So, kinda like an advanced version of the difference between TCP/IP vs UDP, in that the stack as part of it's protocols checks for integrity.

—

KT Alex 'Iceshade' Andrade [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo2_400.jpg[/img]

Sun, 2012-11-11 10:48

#30

deathinlonging deathinlonging's picture

I happen to agree that the

I happen to agree that the way the cortical stack is designed doesn't make much sense. Personally, I'd have it store the brain as it is the first time the cortical stack is inserted, and just keep a running log of changes. At that point, it'd be quite easy to prevent corruption. You could aid ease of use and safety by never trashing the log, although every time there was a new morph it would make sense to update the original block with the log, but still keep the log (just with a marker to say 'here's where we stopped updating the block). This would make it faster to restore from backup while still allowing you to roll back changes if you were, say, infected by the exsurgent virus or something. Oh, look, this is starting to sound like a journaling filesystem without a limit on the journal size!

Sun, 2012-11-11 13:51

#31

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Yes and you can use copy-on

Yes and you can use copy-on-write for rapid snapshots! Network Appliance brand cortical stacks! LOL

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Mon, 2012-11-12 21:28

#32

Justin Alexander Justin Alexander's picture

Robobobo wrote:Setting up

Robobobo wrote:
Setting up backup routines for peoples' data is part of my day job, and that's a deal-breaker.

A cortical stack is not a backup routine; it's a RAID drive. Anyone thinking "I've got a RAID drive, so I don't need to do backups" is going to get burned sooner or later. The analogy here is not perfect, because the primary function of the cortical stack is to maintain an up-to-the-second copy of the data in a format which is incredibly durable, impossible to hack, and likely to survive virtually any accident that will take out the primary brain. You want an offsite backup routine? That's handled with an emergency farcaster (EP, pg. 306), which defaults to a backup every 48 hours but can also be scheduled "more or less frequently, keeping in mind that ego broadcasts are generally limited for security purposes and because they hog bandwidth". You want an onsite backup kept independent from both the cortical stack and the primary brain? What you want is a ghostrider module (EP, pg. 307). The cost on this implant is low and also allows you to run the duplicate as an informorph, but it would be just as easy to use an implant like that for cold storing a backup copy of your ego on whatever schedule you'd like. And, of course, if you want multiple backups all with the same security and durability of the cortical stack that's pretty easy to achieve: Just buy multiple cortical stacks. Or a higher-end/larger cortical stack with more storage space.

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The Alexandrian

Sat, 2012-11-17 13:29

#33

Solar

Personally I tend to run the

Personally I tend to run the cortical stack as having two parts. The first is your long term memory, psychological traits, the deep stuff that makes up the core of who you are in a more substantial sense. The second part of the cortical stack retains short term memory, your recent emotional feelings, non-memorized sensory input, all that stuff. The long term part backs up regularly, updating itself on an almost constant basis (since it essentially duplicates changes in your meat brain within it's digital structure). However in the event of an emergency, it does [i]not[/i] back-up. Such a thing is un-necessary since the long term memory is all there and a failed back-up could have drastic consequences, as the OP says. The short term memory does attempt to back-up in an emergency, since if that fails, the core aspect of the transhuman isn't lost. When re-sleeved, the short term dump is checked. If it is fine, the transhuman suffers no memory loss. If it is corrupted, then short term memories are lost. This is good for me, as a GM, for two reasons. Firstly it gives me a good get-out clause for why the ego in a recovered stack might not remember certain things, and that's useful when it comes to trickling info to players and letting the story be revealed as I like. Secondly, it allows me to fuck with my players. See, the boundary between long term and short term memory is difficult to pin down. Which means that sometimes, an ego will be resleeved [i]thinking[/i] that it was fully restored, short term memory and all, when actually some time was lost due to a failed short term memory back-up. So a player thinks that they know exactly the why's and wherefore's of their death. But they don't. And unlike a normal back-up, they don't know what they have lost. They don't know they've lost anything at all. I am a bastard of a GM and so this is hilarious to me, of course.

Mon, 2012-11-19 22:48

#34

Robobobo

What you're describing is

What you're describing is called an incremental backup in today's IT terminology. You make one big backup to start, then on subsequent days you only backup the changes since the big backup, which is much quicker than backing up the whole system daily. Restoring from incremental backups is more of a pain than restoring from a full backup, which is why I personally avoid them; if you have one full backup followed by ten incrementals and number five is corrupted, you're potentially screwed. But for the purposes of rapid backups of the current state of the brain that's not a bad idea, and requires a much more believable amount of processing power than a backup that mirrors the entire brain every second.

Mon, 2012-11-19 23:52

#35

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Right, and would explain why

Right, and would explain why the book says the first backup takes 10 minutes.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Wed, 2012-11-21 06:26

#36

Solar

Exactly. Full back-up copies

Exactly. Full back-up copies take ten minutes, and yet cortical stacks can grab your ego's information in the time it takes for a bullet to enter your skull and actually start messing up your brain? That doesn't make sense. Most of the information is presumably there all the time, back-up incrementally as Robo explained, with just the more brief, transitory short term memory actually downloaded in the case of morph destruction. Also presumably the software engineers of 10AF have figured out ways to ensure that a corrupted back-up someone down the line does not invalidate the worth of other back-ups happening since, so you don't end up with an entirely corrupted ego-backup in there.

Thu, 2012-11-22 04:51

#37

CAPSLOCKGIRL CAPSLOCKGIRL's picture

I could have sworn that part

I could have sworn that part of the cortical stack's function was as an interface between the brain and a ego bridge for resleeving.

Thu, 2012-11-22 05:08

#38

CAPSLOCKGIRL CAPSLOCKGIRL's picture

CAPSLOCKGIRL wrote:I could

CAPSLOCKGIRL wrote:
I could have sworn that part of the cortical stack's function was as an interface between the brain and a ego bridge for resleeving.

Well, apparently, a removed cortical stack can pretty much instantly have the ego scanned from it, but scanning a biomorph's brain takes 5-10 minutes. One wonders why there isn't some way to access the cortical stack while it's in the biomorph, and scan it instead of the brain.

Tue, 2012-11-27 23:40

#39

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

CAPSLOCKGIRL wrote:Well,

CAPSLOCKGIRL wrote:
Well, apparently, a removed cortical stack can pretty much instantly have the ego scanned from it, but scanning a biomorph's brain takes 5-10 minutes. One wonders why there isn't some way to access the cortical stack while it's in the biomorph, and scan it instead of the brain.

Mechanically speaking, it makes little difference to the story if ego bridge backups work the way you describe. The character's mind gets copied one way or another, so pick what suits your stories best.

—

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Wed, 2012-11-28 06:21

#40

Lorsa

The Doctor wrote:CAPSLOCKGIRL

The Doctor wrote:
CAPSLOCKGIRL wrote:
Well, apparently, a removed cortical stack can pretty much instantly have the ego scanned from it, but scanning a biomorph's brain takes 5-10 minutes. One wonders why there isn't some way to access the cortical stack while it's in the biomorph, and scan it instead of the brain.
Mechanically speaking, it makes little difference to the story if ego bridge backups work the way you describe. The character's mind gets copied one way or another, so pick what suits your stories best.

I tend to think scanning the cortical stack is what you do when resleeving or making a backup. So you can do that, but if you want a proper ego ID then you need to scan the brain as you want to check for response depending on various stimuli and that has to be done on an active brain. Additionally, I think you can fake the ego in the cortical stack but unless you're running a ghostrider module you can't fake what is in your brain.

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Wed, 2012-11-28 09:51

#41

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Lorsa wrote:

Lorsa wrote:
I tend to think scanning the cortical stack is what you do when resleeving or making a backup. So you can do that, but if you want a proper ego ID then you need to scan the brain as you want to check for response depending on various stimuli and that has to be done on an active brain. Additionally, I think you can fake the ego in the cortical stack but unless you're running a ghostrider module you can't fake what is in your brain.

You'd could just use the [Moderate] cost Brainprint Scanner from "Everyday Technology" and then tap the Cortical Stack, though, right? Seems logically the Ego Bridge is really just needed for "Wet Printing" the brain. I'm likely to house-rule the "wet printer" Ego Bridge out of existence, and just make it part of the Healing Vat if I GM (and boost the Healing Vat cost to [Expensive 30k+])

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Wed, 2012-11-28 10:14

#42

Lorsa

NewtonPulsifer wrote:I'm

NewtonPulsifer wrote:
I'm likely to house-rule the "wet printer" Ego Bridge out of existence, and just make it part of the Healing Vat if I GM (and boost the Healing Vat cost to [Expensive 30k+])

I guess you could have two options, the cheap healing vat and the healing vat with built in ego bridge. The cheap version could be used for healing injury and the expensive one for... well everything else.

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