Uplink realism issues

[King Dumpalot_uplink]

I know I'm just spitting hairs, Uplink's great, but I crave for more realism. I'm talking about the units for memory and the insane processor speeds. In uplink, you have gigaquads of memory. What on earth is a gigaquad? I'd much prefer data to be stored in good old bytes and the appropriate prefix. For example, I was reading one of the news bulletins and it was Shock horror as 100 Gigaquads had been stolen. I was severly nonplussed, as I have no Idea how big a gigaquad is. If it'd been 100 Gigabytes, I'd have been more impressed.
Just a thought for the future...

[Cold Fusion]

It's set in 2010. Who knows, there may be gigaquads in the near future...

[Jackmn]

Nothing about uplink is realistic, nor was it meant to be.

[scutum]

yeah, if it was we may have another jackson games issue but with introversion:wink:

[poortwistedme]

And the game would be much more boring.

[jimmy8159]

Quote: from Jackmn on 9:23 pm on July 24, 2003[br]Nothing about uplink is realistic, nor was it meant to be.

Some parts of Uplink are realistic though. Bounce points for example. However, it is not as easy as clicking a few times on a map of the world but the principle remains.

[poortwistedme]

There are no realistic games.
Exept pac-man.

[Jackmn]

Quote: from jimmy8159 on 4:28 am on Sep. 3, 2003[br]

Quote: from Jackmn on 9:23 pm on July 24, 2003[br]Nothing about uplink is realistic, nor was it meant to be.

Some parts of Uplink are realistic though. Bounce points for example. However, it is not as easy as clicking a few times on a map of the world but the principle remains.

The proxy bounces add absolutely no overhead to your ping times or transfer rates.

[Mister Negotiator]

FYI:

Long ago I was a trekker, (ohgodthemaddnessitdidtakeme) so I can tell you that a 'gigaquad' is a unit of computer memory invented by the ST: TNG writers specifically for the purpose of sounding really big but having no real world value, since they were quite aware of the pace of technology.

If you ever watched the original series, Spock had to read the computer's responses off a little calculator print out strip.  That's supposed to be three hundred years in the future.  Are you scared yet?

And one more thing: In 1995 a top-end PC CPU ran at a cheek-flapping 100 Mhz.  By 2001 they were going 1000 Mhz.  So by 2007 we should be seeing 10,000 MHz, (10 GHz) and three years later 60 GHz doesn't seem completely out of the question.

Furthermore, Hz aren't even a measure of caculating speed- they're actually only a measure of how many *clock pulses* the CPU processes in a second, not how many *calculations*.  They are not cumulative when you add more processors; the entire circuitboard is dancing to that tune.  In any Multi-CPU computer, Hz are a useless yardstick, so parallel supercomputers (like the OMEGA) actually measure their processing capability in OPS, or calculations per second.  For example, the Cray-2 hit 1 gigaOPS in 1985, then the world speed record.

The reason that processors are indexed by Hz instead of by OPS is that Hz are engineered into the processor specs, and OPS emerge from the effciency level of the entire integrated computer, which can then only be determined by running a program that does a bunch of random math for a period of time and then reports back the average speed.  It essentialy is a measure of what the computer can do going flat-out.

This isn't very useful for PC purposes, since anyone who has used windows knows they don't take kindly to being asked to push the envelope; simply because you're multitasking you must give up around 20% of your speed or risk the blue screen of death.

And twice as many Hz means twice as many electrons being driven through your machine, which means more resistance and more heat.  That's why Intel keeps dropping the Processor voltage, to try and counteract the increased electron flow.  Lately there's a trend with some processor designers to focus more on getting more calculations per CPU cycle, instead of just more cycles.

See what you get when you complain?!  You get an earfull, that's what!

Now eat your peas.

(Edited by Mister Negotiator at 3:18 am on Oct. 3, 2003)

[Mister Negotiator]

Oh, and Jackmn, you are completely right.  That is probably the game's most significant flaw in versimilitude: That you can bounce your signal through sixty-two systems with no negative effects.  I don't know what those effects should be, but there should be *something*.

But it's a great game.

[bluboy]

Obviously its not realistic, but if it was if would be quite boring. If you have ever actually hacked a system you would undertand its quite dull, with boring port scans,  scripts, Ftp servers and no sleep. All I can say is thank god for Windows XP for being one of the most insecure OS Microsoft has put out. Hack the Planet.......or at least annoy your mates.

[Radical Ed]

Would you play Uplink if...:

- ...other AI hackers could do the same to you that you do to them? (steal from YOUR account, frame you, hack YOUR gateway, etc.)
- ...you had to learn programming to do so?
- ...other companies could un-delete your logs?
- ...each hack took realistic time to be accomplished? (at least 2 hours)

And some info:

- The processors are accurate! For example, in 1993, we had 66 Mhz processors (486s, I think) and now, 2003, we have 3000 Mhz, nearly 50 times more powerful, so it's TOTALLY possible that we get 200 Ghz processors!

- What do you have against the name "gigaquads"?! Another time comparison: let's go back to the 1970s, say "megabyte" and people will look at you as an insane freak!

[Maniak]

You've got a good point. I would play if people stole from my account, and hacks from gateways I could live with, but framing is a no-no. Framing is bad because you don't know what system the hacker routed to. In other words, as soon as you drop out of favor, you're dead. But bank hacks are okay if we had the hackers leave logs, but no one is tracing them. Of course, hacking into gateway would mean deletion of software, which can be combatted with software backups on fileservers. But we can live without framing. Anyone who makes a mod like this I will be very happy.



(Edited by Maniak at 3:23 pm on Oct. 3, 2003)

[Radical Ed]

No, it wouldn't be OK! The simple fact that companies and other hackers could un-delete your logs and passive-trace you would make it impossible to make past Intermediate.

[Maniak]

Hold on! We've got the Log Deleter v. 4.0 to take care of that.