ARCHIE, where are you?

[Pepsi Jedi]

Source book one.
Source book one Revised.
Source book two, the Mechinoids
Aftermath
Shemarrian Nation.
(( sorta kinda)) Mutants in orbit. (( again, only sorta kinda))

About 5 different rifters.

[wyrmraker]

ARCHIE 2 was in NORAD, 3 in Maryland, and 4-7 on the moon. No information about ARCHIE 1, as far as I can tell.

[jedi078]

Rifter #47 states that there is a ARCHIE 2.5 in NORAD.

[Killer Cyborg]

I can only find one reference to ARCHIE 1, and it's just a picture.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Don't forget Archie's little brothers. The CS offshoots that were in one of the recent rifters.

[Nightmask]

The Chaos Earth book seems to indicate that there were three working ARCHIE supercomputers at the time of the Great Cataclysm. As already noted, 2 was at NORAD (and believed destroyed), 3 was at Aberdeen (and has survived to become a problem) and 4 was at the CAN moonbase.

If there was an ARCHIE 1, it was likely a prototype and never put into general operation outside of a Cyberworks R&D facility. Which does not mean that it might not still be out there somewhere...

ARCHIE 4 crashed due to the effect that the Great Cataclysm had on the Moon. 5-6 were likely failed attempts at a replacement, with 7 being the final product.

One thing I like to wonder about is the fact that ARCHIE 3 uses a CAN Republic satellite for communications, and doesn't know that it is a new one and not a pre-Rifts one that simply got knocked into a different orbit. It raises the interesting question of just how much ARCHIE 7 and the CAN Republic know about what ARCHIE 3 is up to...

They don't know anything. It's been noted in the material about the satellite that because ARCHIE-3 has valid (albeit old) security codes ARCHIE-7 hasn't notified anyone about the access. After all why would it go 'hey boss so-and-so just accessed Satellite g-9 over there' for someone using valid access codes? Can you imagine how ridiculous things would get telling its superiors for EVERY valid access of its systems and sub-systems? Because rationally how could ARCHIE-7 know that THIS particular case of valid access is any different than the other valid accesses it deals with every minute of every day?

[finn69]

isnt there one in south america as well?

[keir451]

ARCHIE 1 is mentioned in the big adventure book in a HLS, a farmer uncovers him (its in a capsule/container of sorts) in a corner of his field near a Ley Line.

[Killer Cyborg]

ARCHIE 1 is mentioned in the big adventure book in a HLS, a farmer uncovers him (its in a capsule/container of sorts) in a corner of his field near a Ley Line.

Good find!

[Nightmask]

Because it originates on Earth and the Earth is under quarantine. The CAN Republic is not accepting nor responding to communications from planetside anymore than it is allowing any kind of vehicle launches. Thus ARCHIE-3's access would be distinctive from all other CAN traffic on the satellite since there are not supposed to be any legitimate CAN users on Earth. Indeed, I would expect that they would be VERY interested in any communications attempts from Earth using Cyberworks access codes, especially ones associated with any ARCHIE computer.

In present day technical terms, this would be equivalent to a computer network that is blocking all public Internet access, but receives a remote access attempt. That would trip system alarms and any half-competent administrator would have the edge setup to send a notification.

This is why CW3 notes that the CS's "Operation Falling Star" is doomed to failure. Even if they could remote access a killer satellite, the space nations would notice and either take back control or simply blow it away. Efforts to extend comm access to space are as unwelcome as attempts to gain physical access.

Let's see, you're assuming that the satellite has some way of telling that signal A is from someone in space and signal B is from someone on the ground. Even though no one in space who built the satellite had any reason to think anyone on Earth would have access to their security passcodes. Along with that you're assuming that ARCHIE-7 is going to be in the position to realize that the satellite is being accessed from Earth and that people who expected no one on Earth to be alive with the valid codes programmed it to notice such and tell them about it.

As far as modern day technical terms go, you aren't talking a remote hacking attempt that MIGHT set off warning flags. You're talking someone with valid computer access logging in via a secure link which is not going to set off any flags at all. Heck people all the time go around with laptops looking for wireless 'hot spots' to log into otherwise secure networks because people didn't know to close them off. The CAN Republic has nothing whatsoever to give them reason to think that there's a security hole because again there's nothing to suggest that they have one. The codes are valid, computers don't alert you to people using valid codes to access them, no one on the moon has reason to think anyone but themselves have these codes and ARCHIE-7 has nothing to give it reason to think there's something wrong about the computer access to the Satellite to notify anyone about it.

[Killer Cyborg]

Nightmask pretty well has this covered.
There are some circumstances where that kind of login could be discovered and stopped, but they wouldn't be the norm.
And since it hasn't been stopped, it hasn't been discovered.

[csbioborg]

Archie Zero is in the South East if you read DIno Swamp you'll see it
I think the second one
by rifts earth it is offline but still operable

[Killer Cyborg]

ARCHIE-3 had to hunt around a bit to find a Cyberworks satellite. The one he did access was not in a predicted orbit because he did not realize that CAN is still around and putting new satellites into orbit. In connecting to it he would have to giveaway the fact that he is connecting from (and to) locations on Earth since he is sending and receiving communications sessions from very specific sites there. The satellite would have to be logging that fact, since it is not in place to provide communication services to Earth-based parties and is only doing so because ARCHIE has access privileges.

Yes, and IF somebody sifts through all the logins to see where every login is coming from, THEN that would matter.
But it wouldn't be unusual for them not to- that's potentially a LOT of information to sift through, for no real reason since they're not expecting anybody/anything from Earth to try to log in.

I find it difficult to believe that 24th Century communication technology is less sophisticated than early 21st Century. ARCHIE-7, while not alive, is sentient, and a more recent model than ARCHIE-3. Plus it is partly tasked with supporting the whole Earth quarantine, which is a major goal of the CAN Republic. It would be very weird for it to not put two and two together and notice that it's satellite is being accessed by someone groundside.

Now THAT is an interesting point!
I'll try to read up on ARCHIE 7 and see if I can agree or disagree.

[Nightmask]

Because it originates on Earth and the Earth is under quarantine. The CAN Republic is not accepting nor responding to communications from planetside anymore than it is allowing any kind of vehicle launches. Thus ARCHIE-3's access would be distinctive from all other CAN traffic on the satellite since there are not supposed to be any legitimate CAN users on Earth. Indeed, I would expect that they would be VERY interested in any communications attempts from Earth using Cyberworks access codes, especially ones associated with any ARCHIE computer.

In present day technical terms, this would be equivalent to a computer network that is blocking all public Internet access, but receives a remote access attempt. That would trip system alarms and any half-competent administrator would have the edge setup to send a notification.

This is why CW3 notes that the CS's "Operation Falling Star" is doomed to failure. Even if they could remote access a killer satellite, the space nations would notice and either take back control or simply blow it away. Efforts to extend comm access to space are as unwelcome as attempts to gain physical access.

Let's see, you're assuming that the satellite has some way of telling that signal A is from someone in space and signal B is from someone on the ground. Even though no one in space who built the satellite had any reason to think anyone on Earth would have access to their security passcodes. Along with that you're assuming that ARCHIE-7 is going to be in the position to realize that the satellite is being accessed from Earth and that people who expected no one on Earth to be alive with the valid codes programmed it to notice such and tell them about it.

As far as modern day technical terms go, you aren't talking a remote hacking attempt that MIGHT set off warning flags. You're talking someone with valid computer access logging in via a secure link which is not going to set off any flags at all. Heck people all the time go around with laptops looking for wireless 'hot spots' to log into otherwise secure networks because people didn't know to close them off. The CAN Republic has nothing whatsoever to give them reason to think that there's a security hole because again there's nothing to suggest that they have one. The codes are valid, computers don't alert you to people using valid codes to access them, no one on the moon has reason to think anyone but themselves have these codes and ARCHIE-7 has nothing to give it reason to think there's something wrong about the computer access to the Satellite to notify anyone about it.

Actually no, not if you stop to think about it.

Nobody is using general broadcast transmissions. Not ARCHIE-3, and not the space colonies. The reason is straightforward and very obvious. ARCHIE-3 knows that there are other high-tech powers in North America that would notice broadcast transmissions. Otherwise he could just use his mobile robots to serve as a relay network on the ground. The beauty of satellite communications is that he can use tight-beam transmission and thus avoid being overheard by the CS and Free Quebec, along with Northern Gun, or the Manistique Imperium. Especially the latter since he needs to communicate with his Titan Robotics factory there without being noticed.

Where do you get the idea that no one is using general broadcast transmissions? Just about everyone uses general broadcasting, I certainly haven't seen anything that even remotely implies that for example power armor uses directed broadcasting. Plus people in distress broadcast omni-directionally because you can't know where help might come from. This would be especially true in space where you have to broadcast widely in order to be heard. Sure there's going to be some, maybe a pretty measurable portion, of directed traffic but not all traffic by any stretch of the imagination is going to be at a targeted location.

Meanwhile, the space colonies are extremely unlikely to use open broadcast either. A key sticking point for them is that the do not want anyone on Earth to know that they are up there. They keep the planet under surveillance, so they would know about the major nation-states that have formed. But even in cases where they know the parties involved fairly well they do not allow any contact. Thus nobody is talking to the NGR or the Republic of Japan, even though they know they are down there. Heck, the Zone had ringside seats to watch the Republic of Japan reappear after nearly three centuries absence!

Like I noted above, there's going to be some broad-ranging radio transmissions, and even something directed if you're between the source and earth the radio waves certainly aren't going to stop at your vehicle they're going to continue on. There's also the fact that the atmosphere blocks or reduces a good range of radio transmissions especially if they're relatively weak and in the right frequency range. You also need people on earth actually looking into space trying to find these signals and we know that places like the CS aren't doing that they're focused on the actual threats on the ground.

For obvious reasons, lots of comm chatter in space would be a dead giveaway to the CS, FQ, NGR, RoJ, Atlantis and others that the space colonies are still up there. This actually helps to account for the usage of communication satellites by people who otherwise have the freedom of open space. They are probably using tight-beam and relays to help keep themselves quiet and unnoticed. Also, the CAN Republic and the space stations are not all on the friendliest terms.

Only if someone's looking and capable of detecting it, and as others have noted a decent telescope and the size of the satellites would mean the odds are good if someone's looking they know that there are beings of some sort in space already. They don't need radio communications to alert them to that fact.

So the origin of any communication is going to be a point of interest to the group any particular satellite belongs to. CAN does not want KLS hacking their satellites after all. Even in the present day, most communications log the source. In the case of Internet communication sessions this includes, at the very least, the source IP address, along with (if possible) the host name and domain name of the sender. Radio communications now routinely include things like transmitter location (such as the nearest associated cell tower) and may even include source triangulation and GPS information (for 911 purposes).

Need I point out that a satellite in space can hardly record where a transmission comes from if it's not built to look in that direction or even have a reason to do so? The satellite ARCHIE-3 makes use of may have logs of who talked to it, maybe not, but unless you've a reason to review those logs it's a moot point. Without some reason to do so ARCHIE-7 and its controllers aren't going to be reviewing system logs of everything it talks to particularly when the codes are recognized codes. While we the readers know what's going on the CAN Republic has no reason to.

Given the situation, it is highly implausible that CAN would be indifferent to the source location of comm traffic going through their satellites. Even assuming that they believe that ARCHIE's 2-3 are "dead", it would not be unreasonable to imagine that somebody like the Coalition States might find some old Cyberworks access codes buried in some ruined facility on Earth. They certainly have the technology to send broadcast radio transmissions into orbit, and CAN (along with the other space nations) would have to be morons to simply allow any responses from their satellites to transmissions from Earth, even if only to send an "access denied" message.

Really over-thinking things, and ignoring human nature and fallibility. As I already noted they've no reason to be reviewing logs of completely valid access activity, and no reason to be installing technology that would tell where a signal came from, only technology that determined if the codes were valid and deny access to invalid codes.

ARCHIE-3 had to hunt around a bit to find a Cyberworks satellite. The one he did access was not in a predicted orbit because he did not realize that CAN is still around and putting new satellites into orbit. In connecting to it he would have to giveaway the fact that he is connecting from (and to) locations on Earth since he is sending and receiving communications sessions from very specific sites there. The satellite would have to be logging that fact, since it is not in place to provide communication services to Earth-based parties and is only doing so because ARCHIE has access privileges.

Again, he's giving away nothing because none of the people in CAN had any reason to set the satellite up to actually discriminate between signals from Earth vs space. People don't engineer for things that they don't think can happen.

I find it difficult to believe that 24th Century communication technology is less sophisticated than early 21st Century. ARCHIE-7, while not alive, is sentient, and a more recent model than ARCHIE-3. Plus it is partly tasked with supporting the whole Earth quarantine, which is a major goal of the CAN Republic. It would be very weird for it to not put two and two together and notice that it's satellite is being accessed by someone groundside. Gods know ARCHIE-3 monitors anything and everything he can about his roving robots and chip-implanted humans. Since CAN, and the other space nations, want to keep Earth ignorant of their existence, I have a hard time believing that they do not log where every comm transmission comes from before allowing it.

No, ARCHIE-7 is not sentient the text goes to the trouble of making it quite clear that the AI is not sentient. Also just because it's a more recent model does not mean it's better, only that it's different. New models are as often no better than or even worse than an older model as they are better. ARCHIE-7 is also built for the specific task of managing all the systems necessary for keeping the moon colony functional and safe, and does not have the task of monitoring everything going on everywhere.

It's also not a matter of technological sophistication but what it's designed for. As such its limited by the weaknesses and blind spots of its creators. As much as you keep insisting otherwise it's not going to review every valid access code, the entire point of an access code is to get access without causing time being wasted by people looking you over. You no more are going to see it ensuring that the code is in the hands of someone acceptable than you're going to see a bank going over each and every person who comes in with valid ID to be sure that the ID is really valid.

However, they have no reason to lock ARCHIE out of the satellite if they are packet-sniffing lots of juicy data that he relays through it. Aside from huge amounts of information that ARCHIE's robots collect on the ground, he also sends technical data to his various facilities, which may even include information about Mechanoid and Kittani technology that he has reverse-engineered. It could potentially be a gold mine for CAN if they are eavesdropping, and I cannot come up with a plausible reason why they would not be.

I can, because they aren't listening as they haven't a clue what is going on for one. For another ARCHIE-3 is obviously going to be encrypting the data and it's just gibberish to anyone who is looking, and for a third if they knew they'd cut off access to the satellite because they're horribly paranoid and wouldn't allow anyone on Earth to benefit from their technology and the chance that whoever it is could hack the computer that keeps them alive.

[wyrmraker]

ARCHIE-3 had to hunt around a bit to find a Cyberworks satellite. The one he did access was not in a predicted orbit because he did not realize that CAN is still around and putting new satellites into orbit. In connecting to it he would have to giveaway the fact that he is connecting from (and to) locations on Earth since he is sending and receiving communications sessions from very specific sites there. The satellite would have to be logging that fact, since it is not in place to provide communication services to Earth-based parties and is only doing so because ARCHIE has access privileges.

Yes, and IF somebody sifts through all the logins to see where every login is coming from, THEN that would matter.
But it wouldn't be unusual for them not to- that's potentially a LOT of information to sift through, for no real reason since they're not expecting anybody/anything from Earth to try to log in.

I find it difficult to believe that 24th Century communication technology is less sophisticated than early 21st Century. ARCHIE-7, while not alive, is sentient, and a more recent model than ARCHIE-3. Plus it is partly tasked with supporting the whole Earth quarantine, which is a major goal of the CAN Republic. It would be very weird for it to not put two and two together and notice that it's satellite is being accessed by someone groundside.

Now THAT is an interesting point!
I'll try to read up on ARCHIE 7 and see if I can agree or disagree.

I'm going to have to disagree on the point of nobody sifting through logins. I think that any tight-beam, satellite capable transmission using extremely dated command codes would very likely be instantly flagged as important and shunted over for examination. It would be done today, if someone were to use satellite codes from 1975, so there's no reasonable reason why it wouldn't be done in a region that didn't lose the technologies and methodologies from the Golden Age.

[Nightmask]

A few other points:

1) ARCHIE-3 can run 10,000 simultaneous communication sessions of his own. This does not count his awareness of every last light switch in his complex. He has even managed to notice when a chip-implanted human attempted to seek help from somebody by blinking in Morse Code! Obviously the ARCHIE series has pretty darned good monitoring and logging! A human might miss an entry in the access logs. But a supercomputer like ARCHIE-7 would not. Even absent any degree of personhood it is, like ARCHIE-3, designed to maintain awareness of all it's systems. Keep in mind here that Cyberworks also invented VRRDS. That strongly suggests that 7 includes remote systems in it's monitoring.

2) ARCHIE-3 is not exactly being sparing in his use of the satellite. He thinks he is the only one using it after all. Thus he is not in any way trying to moderate his usage of it. Quite the contrary, he is piping everything from technical specs for Titan Robotics to sensory data uploads/downloads from his Shemarrian warrior robots. Your ISP knows how much bandwidth you are are using even for legitimate traffic. ARCHIE-7 would have to wonder who is sending so much data through the satellite.

3) Any time you access a system, even legitimately, your access gets logged. So does the source you accessed from (in our case the IP address). Your cell carrier knows which towers your phone accessed the network from, and how many calls and how much data you received and sent. They also know where those calls went to, and what any data exchanges were with. So there are two possibilities here. Either ARCHIE-3 is using a login/password from somebody who has been dead for 300 years (very unlikely), or else he is using his own access permissions, which are probably tagged as "ARCHIE-3" in the satellite's access logs. In either case, that would have to raise a red flag in any audit of those access logs. It only gets worse if we factor in that his Shemarrians, Argent Goodson and Skelebot knockoffs all have to be using the same access from different Earth-based locations in order to report back to him. This would mean that "ARCHIE-3" would show up in the access logs a lot, and would show as having transmitted to/from numerous ground sites. In most present-day communications systems, it does get noted if your login is used from multiple locations simultaneously (to help reduce hacking).

4) If ARCHIE-3 used an old Cyberworks access, he is also likely to be using Cyberworks encryption. Again, this is standard in communications networks today. Even an encrypted session originating from and traveling through a single vendor's network can be decrypted and read. This is, in actual fact, required by law for voice communications, since the government can get a warrant obliging wiretap access. It is also common in data communications since packet inspection to ensure that no hidden malware is being moved through the network is becoming a norm. You think that anyone on the ground can just casually tap into any satellite, space probe or the space station without being logged? Spy satellites would never have been worth the effort if they could!

In short, nothing that I am postulating is impossible, or even unlikely, using current real world communications technology! Anonymity is an illusion even in the real world. Sure, a lot of people are naive enough to believe that they are concealed behind the communications networks that they use. But the truth is that they are not. Every last communication session at least produces some logging. Fast forward to the world of Golden Age (and later) technology and the whole idea becomes absolutely ridiculous!

The last thing I do is think there's a safe anonymity in the world of the internet and advanced communications, but in the same vein there are plenty of people who manage quite fine to pull off some impressive acts of hacking and cybercrime and NEVER get caught. Some of the more high-profile hackers that were caught only got caught because they tripped themselves up not because the authorities were anywhere close to catching them.

So just because it's the Golden Age it doesn't follow that there's some perfect system in place that could with anything close to certainty detect ARCHIE-3's activities with that CAN Republic satellite. They were still human and still quite prone to human fallibility that you fail to even acknowledge, even with the fact they certainly didn't manage to have the Juicer or MOM implant technology anywhere close to perfected. Microsoft is riddled with security problems and has to come out with patches constantly to fill them yet somehow ARCHIE-7 and the CAN Republic are just so perfect that they couldn't possibly have overlooked the idea that someone on Earth could access their satellites with old security codes that they never bothered to change? That somehow someone should notice that older codes are being used when they've no reason to suspect it and if they had considered someone using old codes that they've have just disabled them in the first place?

Sorry but just too much effort to credit the CAN Republic and ARCHIE-7 with a measure of infallibility that they just just don't rate.

[Nightmask]

Like I noted above, there's going to be some broad-ranging radio transmissions, and even something directed if you're between the source and earth the radio waves certainly aren't going to stop at your vehicle they're going to continue on. There's also the fact that the atmosphere blocks or reduces a good range of radio transmissions especially if they're relatively weak and in the right frequency range. You also need people on earth actually looking into space trying to find these signals and we know that places like the CS aren't doing that they're focused on the actual threats on the ground.

Only if someone's looking and capable of detecting it, and as others have noted a decent telescope and the size of the satellites would mean the odds are good if someone's looking they know that there are beings of some sort in space already. They don't need radio communications to alert them to that fact.

Perhaps I should have qualified that a little a better. When I said "nobody" I meant ARCHIE (either one) or the space colonies. Ground-based groups like the CS, NGR, RoJ and others almost certainly do so. However, it is a simple fact that there is only so much electromagnetic spectrum to go around. Either the space colonies would have to be using an extremely esoteric communications technology (like neutrino beams) or else anything they are sending on the microwave/radio end of the spectrum could be intercepted if the frequency were detectable by any receiving station.

That's the key on there, IF it's detectable and IF you're looking. Even a relatively tight-beamed signal has spread and as I already noted at least some of those transmissions have to be towards the Earth so it's impossible to not have some signals transmitting towards Earth (obviously the satellite ARCHIE-3 is tapping into is built to transmit to Earth, which raises the Fridge Logic question of WHY? since if you're never going to talk to anyone on Earth why does your Satellite have the ability to transmit to Earth? ).

Need I point out that a satellite in space can hardly record where a transmission comes from if it's not built to look in that direction or even have a reason to do so? The satellite ARCHIE-3 makes use of may have logs of who talked to it, maybe not, but unless you've a reason to review those logs it's a moot point. Without some reason to do so ARCHIE-7 and its controllers aren't going to be reviewing system logs of everything it talks to particularly when the codes are recognized codes. While we the readers know what's going on the CAN Republic has no reason to.

Actually, as I said, they do have reason to check. Earth is under complete quarantine. That includes a communications quarantine.

Right, and exactly why do you think it follows that because there's a communications quarantine with Earth that the CAN Republic must be aware of the communications with ARCHIE-3? There's a ban on illegals crossing into the US that doesn't mean we must as a result know of every illegal invading our country. For which as I noted earlier if there's a communications black-out with Earth why is the satellite ARCHIE-3 is using even able to broadcast to Earth? While you're insisting that ARCHIE-7 must know about ARCHIE-3 talking to it a big point is being missed, namely that if there's a total black-out you don't make any satellites able to broadcast to Earth yet clearly this satellite does.

Really over-thinking things, and ignoring human nature and fallibility. As I already noted they've no reason to be reviewing logs of completely valid access activity, and no reason to be installing technology that would tell where a signal came from, only technology that determined if the codes were valid and deny access to invalid codes.

Ah, but human fallibility is not a part of this conversation. I am assuming that system monitoring is being done by ARCHIE-7, not by humans. Since the space nations are not friendly with each other, even "legitimate" access is likely to be periodically audited. You think CAN does not care if one of their legitimate access codes were used from a transmitter on Freedom Station?

Yes human fallibility is part of this conversation, as ARCHIE-7 as great and well-built as it is is still a product of human minds and thinking processes. Because of that ARCHIE-7 is not going to be proving better than its creators when they build those flaws into it. Since we're told ARCHIE-7 isn't really aware of the traffic via ARCHIE-3 there must be a reason for that, being human fallibility built into the machine. You're also ignoring the flip side, namely ARCHIE-3 should of a certainty be aware of the CAN Republic and ARCHIE-7. Why? Because ARCHIE-3 IS sentient and would certainly review the software and logs in the satellite so should be aware of remote access by ARCHIE-7. It works both ways after all, to insist ARCHIE-7 must be aware of ARCHIE-3's activities then ARCHIE-3 must be aware of ARCHIE-7 AND the entire CAN Republic courtesy of those codes. By the time anyone human found out and blocked access ARCHIE-3 would have downloaded the entire database about the space community.

Again, he's giving away nothing because none of the people in CAN had any reason to set the satellite up to actually discriminate between signals from Earth vs space. People don't engineer for things that they don't think can happen.

I really do not see your logic here. CAN is not oblivious to the fact that there are technologically advanced nations on Earth, some of which, like the CS, used technology salvaged from old Cyberworks leftovers. They have no reason not to think that somebody on the ground might at last attempt to access their satellites. Indeed, the CS's "Operation Falling Star" is intended to try to do exactly that. Plus, from their lofty vantage point Cyberworks can see that Triax has survived. Corporate espionage was a way of life during the Golden Age. Satellites would likely have access logging by default specifically because someone with stolen codes might try to hack them.

CAN has no reason to think anyone on Earth is using their salvaged technology, let alone access to high-security access codes that would logically be known by just a few. The last thing they have reason to think after seeing what happened to Earth and the space community is that anything that could be a security risk survived on Earth.

No, ARCHIE-7 is not sentient the text goes to the trouble of making it quite clear that the AI is not sentient. Also just because it's a more recent model does not mean it's better, only that it's different. New models are as often no better than or even worse than an older model as they are better. ARCHIE-7 is also built for the specific task of managing all the systems necessary for keeping the moon colony functional and safe, and does not have the task of monitoring everything going on everywhere.

No, the text makes it clear that ARCHIE-7 is not "alive". It is, however, capable of "analyzing data in a subjective way and can act on subjective logic: hunches and speculation" (MiO page 62). It also has freedom to make many decisions and take many action independently of human intervention so long as these do not seriously impact the people living inside of it's systems.

Which does not make it sentient, it explicitly says that unlike ARCHIE-3 ARCHIE-7 is not sentient, it's just a really complex computer. While it's got a great AI it can't reason to the degree a living mind can.

It's also not a matter of technological sophistication but what it's designed for. As such its limited by the weaknesses and blind spots of its creators. As much as you keep insisting otherwise it's not going to review every valid access code, the entire point of an access code is to get access without causing time being wasted by people looking you over. You no more are going to see it ensuring that the code is in the hands of someone acceptable than you're going to see a bank going over each and every person who comes in with valid ID to be sure that the ID is really valid.

This statement suggests that you really do not know much about how information technology works now. Increasingly, most systems scrutinize valid access logins and every login, even valid ones, are logged. Even Facebook does this, although many people do not notice until they try to do multiple logins and add a previously unknown access device (like an iPad or a cellphone). This is intended to make sure that stolen logins are not used to access systems. It gets suspicious if a lot of different IP addresses all use the same login, especially if they do so simultaneously. ARCHIE-3 is using his access for himself, Argent Goodson, his Shemarrians, his fake Skelebots and many other systems.

You're still assuming that the satellite's capable of telling where a log-in comes in and doesn't simply record that a log-in occurred and what codes were used.

I can, because they aren't listening as they haven't a clue what is going on for one. For another ARCHIE-3 is obviously going to be encrypting the data and it's just gibberish to anyone who is looking, and for a third if they knew they'd cut off access to the satellite because they're horribly paranoid and wouldn't allow anyone on Earth to benefit from their technology and the chance that whoever it is could hack the computer that keeps them alive.

If ARCHIE-3 used a 300 year-old access code, he would almost certainly be using 300 year-old encryption. He is super-intelligent, but not at all imaginative, and has no reason to believe that there is anyone alive who can read pre-rifts Cyberworks encryption. Aside from the fact that his login would show as "ARCHIE-3" in the satellite logs, the sheer quantity of data ARCHIE-3 is passing through the satellite would be noteworthy.

Now, CAN and ARCHIE-7 would not have to shut his access down. They could passively monitor everything he sends through the pipe (we can do that in the real world today) and dump it into storage for analysis. That is actually very easy to do. ARCHIE-7 could still reject any attempt that ARCHIE-3 might make to attempt to uplink to the Moon or any other system in space. Since ARCHIE-3 does not know for sure that anyone is out there ARCHIE-7 could just return the equivalent of an HTTP/SIP 400 "no host found" error without giving away anything, including his own existence. To ARCHIE-3 it would just look like no remote hosts were answering any communications attempts.

ARCHIE-3 used a 300 year old access code because quite logically in looking for what it felt was a pre-Rifts satellite that's what it would require, it doesn't logically follow that it would still be using 300 year old encryption with all the time he's had to learn particularly after dealing with the Mechanoids. ARCHIE-3 is quite paranoid in its own right after all, and we know it uses impressive encryption and tight beam transmissions where possible so it's doubtful it's still using 300 year old Encryption. Also as I've already pointed out ARCHIE-3 has as much reason to realize ARCHIE-7 exists as one insists ARCHIE-7 has to know about ARCHIE-3. What a sentient AI like ARCHIE-3 doesn't look through the code in the satellite and go 'hey wait someone used this just last week?' and backtrack to ARCHIE-7? Where because it's got valid codes (boy for such bright people it's amazing how the CAN Republic left those codes valid for 3 centuries, talk about a security hole) it roots around and realizes that there's a really big orbital community. If a security review did catch on it'd be far too late to deny ARCHIE-3 knowledge of their existence and as much technical data as it could download.

[Nightmask]

The last thing I do is think there's a safe anonymity in the world of the internet and advanced communications, but in the same vein there are plenty of people who manage quite fine to pull off some impressive acts of hacking and cybercrime and NEVER get caught. Some of the more high-profile hackers that were caught only got caught because they tripped themselves up not because the authorities were anywhere close to catching them.

So just because it's the Golden Age it doesn't follow that there's some perfect system in place that could with anything close to certainty detect ARCHIE-3's activities with that CAN Republic satellite. They were still human and still quite prone to human fallibility that you fail to even acknowledge, even with the fact they certainly didn't manage to have the Juicer or MOM implant technology anywhere close to perfected. Microsoft is riddled with security problems and has to come out with patches constantly to fill them yet somehow ARCHIE-7 and the CAN Republic are just so perfect that they couldn't possibly have overlooked the idea that someone on Earth could access their satellites with old security codes that they never bothered to change? That somehow someone should notice that older codes are being used when they've no reason to suspect it and if they had considered someone using old codes that they've have just disabled them in the first place?

Sorry but just too much effort to credit the CAN Republic and ARCHIE-7 with a measure of infallibility that they just just don't rate.

I could only agree were it not for the fact that Earth quarantine is a major goal of the CAN Republic. It is not an afterthought. It is not something that they are likely to leave to casual oversight. We are talking about the space nation that contributes the lion's share of the resources dedicated to the quarantine.

If this were the 22nd Century, when it seemed like most of the world was dead or in the Dark Ages, I could maybe buy it. Especially since Earth was cut off from space by everything from volcanic ash to interference from the ley lines. But in the 24th Century things have quieted down. From space, CAN can see that the New German Republic (and Triax) are still going strong (in all likelihood they shot down every space launch Triax has attempted). They would have watched the Coalition States and Free Quebec build their termite mound fortress cities and deploy massive technological armies (most recently against Tolkeen). They would have seen the Republic of Japan return from the past. They would see the monstrous nations of Atlantis and the Phoenix Empire in all of their magical and technological glory (and horror).

In short, they actual have no reason to believe that somebody would not attempt to communicate with any satellites in space. At the very least the NGR and RoJ have the necessary knowledge of pre-rifts satellites to make the attempt. The CS has the technology, but possibly not the specific knowledge of what satellites were up there. Which means that transmissions into space looking to find one would be expected, which is exactly what ARCHIE-3 did do and what the CS is attempting to do with "Operation Falling Star".

There really does not seem (to me) to be much of a problem with fallibility on the part of either the humans of the CAN Republic or ARCHIE-7 here. It would actually seem like a fairly standard consideration for the quarantine, much like monitoring for attempted space launches is.

Knowing people would try communicating doesn't mean that they'd believe anyone would be communicating with valid access codes, and if they're so paranoid as you insist they'd have never been valid in the first place for ARCHIE-3 to use. So while you feel that they should have been too paranoid the fact is they weren't, they messed up and ARCHIE-3 benefits from it.

Also as I noted elsewhere if they were so paranoid about not communicating with Earth or allowing for it then the satellite wouldn't be capable of doing what it does. For it to act as a satellite relay with Earth locations it had to be built with that ability, with dishes pointing towards Earth to make it possible. It's simply not possible if the satellite were built for space relay only and passive spying for someone to use it for ground-based communications, it had to be built for that.

This is really a case of the readers due to way too much free time to think about it going over everything and seeing the fridge logic involved and noticing all the holes in a particular set-up that have to exist to make a particular thing possible. You're looking and going 'but they're so paranoid it must not be possible for something like this to happen right under their noses', even when such things happen RL all the time, so in spite of their paranoia CAN failed to shut down old security codes and its super-computer that monitors their entire facility simply isn't set up to watch over every log-in or care as long as the log-in is valid.

[Nightmask]

Knowing people would try communicating doesn't mean that they'd believe anyone would be communicating with valid access codes, and if they're so paranoid as you insist they'd have never been valid in the first place for ARCHIE-3 to use. So while you feel that they should have been too paranoid the fact is they weren't, they messed up and ARCHIE-3 benefits from it.

Also as I noted elsewhere if they were so paranoid about not communicating with Earth or allowing for it then the satellite wouldn't be capable of doing what it does. For it to act as a satellite relay with Earth locations it had to be built with that ability, with dishes pointing towards Earth to make it possible. It's simply not possible if the satellite were built for space relay only and passive spying for someone to use it for ground-based communications, it had to be built for that.

This is really a case of the readers due to way too much free time to think about it going over everything and seeing the fridge logic involved and noticing all the holes in a particular set-up that have to exist to make a particular thing possible. You're looking and going 'but they're so paranoid it must not be possible for something like this to happen right under their noses', even when such things happen RL all the time, so in spite of their paranoia CAN failed to shut down old security codes and its super-computer that monitors their entire facility simply isn't set up to watch over every log-in or care as long as the log-in is valid.

Rifts :Aftermath says on pages 84 - 85 that that satellite's purpose was monitoring events on Earth. It also states that ARCHIE-7 is aware of ARCHIE-3's accessing of the satellite and that it's programming prohibits it from responding to ARCHIE-3 and breaching the secrecy of the CAN Republic's existence. The only (annoyingly) unanswered question is just how much of the data is ARCHIE-7 recording and analyzing, and has he handed off some it to human operators as well? Security breaches are rarely left to just happen without deeper inquiry.

More unanswered questions than that, including why you think a satellite up to monitor things would also double as a relay satellite transceiver. Again, you don't build in functions you aren't going to use or have no need of. You don't set up transceiver capabilities on something only meant to be a receiver. Radio telescopes aren't set up as Transceivers because you're only looking, you've no reason to send. A spy satellite isn't going to be set up to send when you're only interested in watching, and a spy satellite watching even part of Rifts Earth with the Moon as it's target receiver requires a lot more than a few degrees of adjustment to use its dish to retransmit things to Earth. Yet this spy satellite is set up for ground relay of radio transmissions from point to point on the surface, a specific function it wouldn't be capable of if truly designed just to spy on Earth.

I'm sure this is an error created by the writer simply not realizing that satellites don't work like that as a basic function but must have it as the intent but either way it's a given and highly curious feature of this satellite that it's not in fact built as merely as spy satellite but has dishes set up for the purpose of relaying transmissions from point to point on the Earth.

[Nightmask]

That's the key on there, IF it's detectable and IF you're looking. Even a relatively tight-beamed signal has spread and as I already noted at least some of those transmissions have to be towards the Earth so it's impossible to not have some signals transmitting towards Earth (obviously the satellite ARCHIE-3 is tapping into is built to transmit to Earth, which raises the Fridge Logic question of WHY? since if you're never going to talk to anyone on Earth why does your Satellite have the ability to transmit to Earth? ).

ARCHIE-3 would only need to request that the satellite adjust the angle of it's transmitters a few degrees to get some coverage of Earth's surface. It is worth noting that he does not even have access beyond a certain swathe of North America. However, changing the satellite's angle would almost certainly trigger an alert back to ARCHIE-7.

That would require more than a few degrees of adjustment on the dishes, you're not talking a modern satellite set up to communicate with stations on Earth but one that has the Moon as its target and while the satellite is looking down the angle at which the Moon would exist is always going to be above the plane of the Earth. It would be physically impossible for the transceiver intended to talk to the moon or another relay satellite to cover the earth's surface as well and there should be no transceivers that would point towards the earth, only receivers.

Right, and exactly why do you think it follows that because there's a communications quarantine with Earth that the CAN Republic must be aware of the communications with ARCHIE-3? There's a ban on illegals crossing into the US that doesn't mean we must as a result know of every illegal invading our country. For which as I noted earlier if there's a communications black-out with Earth why is the satellite ARCHIE-3 is using even able to broadcast to Earth? While you're insisting that ARCHIE-7 must know about ARCHIE-3 talking to it a big point is being missed, namely that if there's a total black-out you don't make any satellites able to broadcast to Earth yet clearly this satellite does.

Not to be mean, but that has to be the worst analogy you could have possibly chosen. Since we are talking about a specific communications satellite, rather than a vast frontier of open space territory. If anything, it is more along the lines of monitoring a single bridge crossing than an entire border.

We're talking about radio transmissions, which come across a wide range of space rather than that single bridge you're talking about. Your bridge fails because while you're watching it they're coming across farther down the border where you aren't watching, or with ARCHIE-3 he's coming up and handing the guards a pass that they recognize as valid and crossing without anyone stopping him as he comes and goes. The guards know but aren't telling anyone.

However, the fact that there is a communications blackout only makes it more likely, not less, that traffic would be monitored. In order to cover such a significant part of the continent, the satellite must be in a reasonably high orbit. Which means that it could point in the general direction of Earth in order to communicate with any of the patrol ships enforcing the blockade on launches originating from Earth, which would likely fly in lower orbits to shoot down targets before they get too far into space. If we assume a comm black out and concerns about security, we can assume that the ships know the predicted orbit of the satellite, but the satellite need not know the position of the ships until they relay through it. They transmit to the satellite at it's known position, send their access codes and location, and the satellite can respond with a tight beam transmission to the now-known position of the ship without flooding the continent below with comm traffic.

Furthermore, common sense would oblige them to make sure that casual communications are not direct towards Earth by users with low access privileges. I am of, of course, thinking of bratty teenagers crank calling Karl Prosek. In the early days after the Great Cataclysm it is likely that people in the space colonies tried extensively to contact loved ones of Earth. At some point somebody had to have put a strict ban on that, otherwise somebody from the CAN Republic or Freedom, Euro or Laika Stations would have been calling groundside before now.

Common sense would say you don't have ANY transmissions aimed towards Earth, and your satellites wouldn't be capable of broadcasting down towards Earth, as you're defining it and yet clearly the CAN republic set up at least one satellite that is meant to talk to Earth or ARCHIE-3 wouldn't have the use of it.

Really over-thinking things, and ignoring human nature and fallibility. As I already noted they've no reason to be reviewing logs of completely valid access activity, and no reason to be installing technology that would tell where a signal came from, only technology that determined if the codes were valid and deny access to invalid codes.

As I have already pointed out, repeatedly, there is no such thing as trusted "valid access". Not even in the real world today. The minimum metric on the Internet is the IP address, which can usually be pinned down to within a few towns. Radio transmissions tend to include even more location data nowadays, including the source location. It would seem that has carried forward, if ARCHIE-3 is using very specific targeted transmissions

Or he's just being careful.

Yes human fallibility is part of this conversation, as ARCHIE-7 as great and well-built as it is is still a product of human minds and thinking processes. Because of that ARCHIE-7 is not going to be proving better than its creators when they build those flaws into it. Since we're told ARCHIE-7 isn't really aware of the traffic via ARCHIE-3 there must be a reason for that, being human fallibility built into the machine. You're also ignoring the flip side, namely ARCHIE-3 should of a certainty be aware of the CAN Republic and ARCHIE-7. Why? Because ARCHIE-3 IS sentient and would certainly review the software and logs in the satellite so should be aware of remote access by ARCHIE-7. It works both ways after all, to insist ARCHIE-7 must be aware of ARCHIE-3's activities then ARCHIE-3 must be aware of ARCHIE-7 AND the entire CAN Republic courtesy of those codes. By the time anyone human found out and blocked access ARCHIE-3 would have downloaded the entire database about the space community.

We have not been told anywhere that ARCHIE-7 is unaware that ARCHIE-3 is using the satellite. Nothing has been said one way or the other. Just that the satellite belongs to the CAN Republic rather than being on old Cyberworks satellite that drifted off it's orbit, which is what ARCHIE-3 does believe (and this is explicitly stated).

However, it does not follow that ARCHIE-3 necessarily knows about ARCHIE-7. It would depend on whether ARCHIE-3 is checking for other users on the satellite. He does not appear to be since he thinks it is his exclusive domain. Remember, he thinks it is a pre-rifts satellite. That has been very explicitly stated. He has no reason to audit it, and indeed he appears to not have even checked it's serial number, which would have told him it was not what he thinks it is. It does not follow that ARCHIE's codes might get him into the CAN Republic network or ARCHIE-7. The communications satellite is likely to be a fairly dumb piece of hardware. It is single-purpose and does not, for example, contain databases full of the history of the CAN Republic. Even if ARCHIE-3 audited it he would learn only generalities.

Right, like no one's ever rummaged through a Hard Drive that they came across even when as far as they knew it had nothing on it worth looking at just on the slight chance it might. Or in this case like ARCHIE-3 in all its time using the satellite never bothered to rummage through it to see what information he had recorded, just in case it had information from the Cataclysm it could use.

ARCHIE-7 does not have to accept any uplink attempts to the Moon from ARCHIE-3. Since it is capable of subjective thought, it could (and would) simply reject any such sessions with a "host not found" error. It is more than intelligent enough to know that it should not be talking to just anyone. I am sure that Freedom and Euro Station hackers have fantasies about hacking into ARCHIE-7 and it is only logical that he is designed to rebuff such attempts. Likewise, if the source were on Earth he would almost certainly refuse the connection. It is not ARCHIE-4, and has never been in contact with any of it's ground-based counterparts during the time it has existed. So it has no reason to see any ARCHIE on the surface as exempt from quarantine (4 might have).

Valid access codes go a pretty good way towards getting you around firewalls and the like, compared to a random hacker trying to break into a network.

CAN has no reason to think anyone on Earth is using their salvaged technology, let alone access to high-security access codes that would logically be known by just a few. The last thing they have reason to think after seeing what happened to Earth and the space community is that anything that could be a security risk survived on Earth.

Where in God's name would you get that idea? The Coalition is flying around in knockoff KLS armor! Indeed, most of their technology is salvaged leftovers from NEMA, which basically means either KLS or Cyberworks technology. Any good spy satellite (and they've got lots of them surveying the planet in great detail) would indicate how much knockoff tech the CS (and Free Quebec) is using, along with their suspicious presence at the Lone Star site. This is before you even factor in the NGR and Japan, both of whom have even more detail about pre-rifts space.

And where in God's name do you get the idea that the Coalition or anyone else on Earth is making use of their design or power armor, or that a power armor that was fairly mass produced for at least the military somehow equates to having reason to think someone acquired high level access codes to their networks?

Which does not make it sentient, it explicitly says that unlike ARCHIE-3 ARCHIE-7 is not sentient, it's just a really complex computer. While it's got a great AI it can't reason to the degree a living mind can.

Technically neither can ARCHIE-3. Why do you think he keeps Hagan Lonovitch around? Both ARCHIE's reason differently from humans. Just the fact that they can handle many thousands of mental tasks at the same time naturally makes them very different. But non-sentient entities cannot make "hunches". That implies a level of subjective though being mere data analysis. Both ARCHIE's are differently sentient from humans, but sentient nonetheless. It's just that ARCHIE-3 is an overacting Shatner/Kirk, while ARCHIE-7 is a coolly logical Spock.

Technically ARCHIE-3 can in fact reason like a human being, it started as a neural net and had the minds of hundreds of humans it was linked with as part of its education and can even sift through their memories that it still contains. ARCHIE-3 keeps Hagan around because it's not so good at originating ideas (hardly a problem only it has) and Hagan has proven such a helpful and enthusiastic partner. ARCHIE-3 is definitely sentient, ARCHIE-7 is not. ARCHIE-7 is just a really complex computer, purely machine, it does not rise to the level of sentient.

You're still assuming that the satellite's capable of telling where a log-in comes in and doesn't simply record that a log-in occurred and what codes were used.

Firstly, if a login came in tagged as "ARCHIE-3", that alone should raise a flag, as that account may still be on file but should show the Last Login as 300 years earlier. Secondly, it would have to know where the login came from in order to respond on tight beam. Otherwise omnidirectional broadcast would be it's only option and that would do @#$%-all for ARCHIE-3's paranoid secrecy.

You only get red flags if its something that its set up to test for. Computer log-ins don't generally complain that you logged in too long ago particularly when using valid codes. Especially in this case with a 'dumb' satellite as you yourself call it. It would have no reason to flag anything to worry about, particularly since you're assuming that it had to be built with a complete record of every access code and when it was used last, instead of having a list of valid codes and recording when they were used last with it.

ARCHIE-3 used a 300 year old access code because quite logically in looking for what it felt was a pre-Rifts satellite that's what it would require, it doesn't logically follow that it would still be using 300 year old encryption with all the time he's had to learn particularly after dealing with the Mechanoids. ARCHIE-3 is quite paranoid in its own right after all, and we know it uses impressive encryption and tight beam transmissions where possible so it's doubtful it's still using 300 year old Encryption. Also as I've already pointed out ARCHIE-3 has as much reason to realize ARCHIE-7 exists as one insists ARCHIE-7 has to know about ARCHIE-3. What a sentient AI like ARCHIE-3 doesn't look through the code in the satellite and go 'hey wait someone used this just last week?' and backtrack to ARCHIE-7? Where because it's got valid codes (boy for such bright people it's amazing how the CAN Republic left those codes valid for 3 centuries, talk about a security hole) it roots around and realizes that there's a really big orbital community. If a security review did catch on it'd be far too late to deny ARCHIE-3 knowledge of their existence and as much technical data as it could download.

You just laid out a whole raft of contradictions there.

First, ARCHIE-3 would have more reason, not less, to use 300 year-old radio encryption around the Mechanoids because they were otherdimensional. That means they knew @#$%-all about Cyberworks.

Sorry but that really fails the logic test. The Mechanoids being extra-dimensional would mean you'd have no reason to use older encryption codes, they're extradimensional they've nothing to give them any common factors with either older or newer encryption so might as well use what you've already got set up.

Second, if you are right and he is using some new encryption that would also raise a flag on the system. A legitimate user access subsequently sending an unintelligible encrypted media stream? Little could possibly be more suspicious than that, and if anything it would be a clear tipoff to ARCHIE-7 or human operators that someone besides the CAN Republic is using the satellite.

That really doesn't make any sense at all, you're talking a satellite, one apparently set up for no apparent reason as a transceiver capable of ground relaying of signals it has no reason to be analyzing data transmissions and deciding whether or not it doesn't like how they're encrypted. It got valid codes and so it sends what it's sent as a relay should, it's not going to be set up to do independent analysis like that.

Third, if ARCHIE-3 had figured out that the CAN Republic existed his temper tantrum would be EPIC! I mean full-on, screaming, raging, chewing the scenery epic! 99.999% of his personality issues stem from a sense of abandonment. If he found out that Cyberworks still exists as a corporation (and now a nation) on the Moon it would be like punching his berserk button with supernatural strength! It is doubtful that even Hagan could calm him down.

Can't see where you get that idea, ARCHIE-3 lived through the Cataclysm on the ground and all that trauma and has its issues but he's already got its issues settled in. The idea that there's a Moon colony isn't going to set off some kind of temper tantrum on its part

Meanwhile, ARCHIE-7 could sit blissfully on the Moon and refuse to answer ARCHIE-3's calls. The communications satellite may just be a dumb router, but ARCHIE-7 is a full-blown neural intelligence. When it's sibling blows a microprocessor it would not be under any obligation to accept any transmissions, even with the proper access codes. It is smart enough to know that it should not take calls from Earth. Especially from irate, earlier model supercomputers.

No, ARCHIE-7 is not a neural intelligence, it's purely a machine (Mutants In Orbit, page 62) and responds as a machine would. It has no emotions and is really inferior to ARCHIE-3 in many ways, being just a machine.

Which makes ARCHIE-3 even more furious, especially since by that point ARCHIE-7 and the humans of the CAN Republic would agree to lock out his satellite network access. Which would leave us with equal odds of ARCHIE-3 going to war against the CS or Atlantis out of sheer frustration. I'm talking hordes of shrieking Shemarrian warrior women tearing up the landscape!

I will agree that if/when ARCHIE-3 lost its satellite communications it would be quite unhappy and frustrated but it surely has back-up plans in case it lost use of the satellite. It wouldn't cause ARCHIE-3 to set off on some kind of pointless war, particularly with Hagan there and Argent to speak sense on the remote chance ARCHIE-3 did consider it.

At best, given the quarantine and heavy security maintained by the CAN Republic (threatened by the orbital stations and the alien Arkhons) it is highly unlikely that ARCHIE-7 would do something as dramatic as break quarantine to chat up a 300 year-old earlier model without checking with President of the CAN Republic or the Chairman of the Cyberworks Aerospace Network.

One should not underestimate ARCHIE-7. "ARCHIE-7 is a more sophisticated version of ARCHIE-3" (MiO page 62). Given the priority the CAN Republic gives to the quarantine, he is unlikely to allow remote access even from an old Cyberworks system on Earth. He is, however, reasonably likely to scrutinize what ARCHIE-3 is up to in case it is a threat to the Zone.

Mind you, and "ARCHIE Goes Berserk" sourcebook could be a lot of fun.

Should complete that quote, where it notes ARCHIE-7 is just a machine and not alive, and that it's purpose is like Spock's Brain from that infamous episode with regards to the Moon base. ARCHIE-7's primary focus is controlling everything in the facility and while it's part of the planning for the defense of the base it's not as capable of things as ARCHIE-3 is.

[Nightmask]

That would require more than a few degrees of adjustment on the dishes, you're not talking a modern satellite set up to communicate with stations on Earth but one that has the Moon as its target and while the satellite is looking down the angle at which the Moon would exist is always going to be above the plane of the Earth. It would be physically impossible for the transceiver intended to talk to the moon or another relay satellite to cover the earth's surface as well and there should be no transceivers that would point towards the earth, only receivers.

Untrue. The Moon is always in motion relative to Earth, so while the satellite is geostationary, the Moon is not always "above" it. When the Moon is occulted by the Earth, the satellite would actually have to send signals "towards" the Earth to relay through other satellites in geosynchronous orbits elsewhere along the Earth's curvature.

Sorry but no. You insist the satellite is using tight-beam transmissions and even with the moon near the horizon relative to the satellite that's well above the surface of the Earth and with the most generous of dish angles straight down towards north america is simply not physically possible for a satellite intended to talk to the moon.

We're talking about radio transmissions, which come across a wide range of space rather than that single bridge you're talking about. Your bridge fails because while you're watching it they're coming across farther down the border where you aren't watching, or with ARCHIE-3 he's coming up and handing the guards a pass that they recognize as valid and crossing without anyone stopping him as he comes and goes. The guards know but aren't telling anyone.

Have you ever been through a customs checkpoint? Even if you are a U.S. citizen and have every right to cross through the checkpoint, the fact that you did so gets logged when your passport gets checked. So does the checkpoint where you entered from. Maybe you are lucky if you use a local border crossing where you say "Hi Frank!" to the guard every day. But given that Earth is under quarantine one has to assume that any access by anyone other than ARCHIE-7 will be logged, even if it is valid.

And a good chance no one will pay attention either or potentially ignore the red flag. Such as happened when that lawyer with an anti-biotic resistant strain of TB decided the law didn't matter to him (ironic given his specialty was suing people who did just what he did) when he learned about it in another country and decided to slip back into the US via Canada after just getting married (again ironic given his wife's father was a high-level doctor in the Center For Disease Control) and the border guard saw the flag on him and waved him through anyway.

Common sense would say you don't have ANY transmissions aimed towards Earth, and your satellites wouldn't be capable of broadcasting down towards Earth, as you're defining it and yet clearly the CAN republic set up at least one satellite that is meant to talk to Earth or ARCHIE-3 wouldn't have the use of it.

The satellite would need to be able to transmit in the general direction of Earth for the reasons I mentioned above. ARCHIE-3 thought it was in the wrong orbit, and probably sent it course "correction" instructions, which would have tipped off ARCHIE-7 that the satellite was being tampered with.

As noted the moon is never in a direction general enough for the satellite's dish to reasonably point towards the Earth and wouldn't have the means to correct enough to aim nearly straight down towards the actual surface. The satellite wouldn't even have a dish pointed to where it could receive a transmission from ARCHIE-3 to make attempts to alter its course.

Right, like no one's ever rummaged through a Hard Drive that they came across even when as far as they knew it had nothing on it worth looking at just on the slight chance it might. Or in this case like ARCHIE-3 in all its time using the satellite never bothered to rummage through it to see what information he had recorded, just in case it had information from the Cataclysm it could use.

While I agree that it is a little odd, it is not entirely implausible. It is unlikely that a communications satellite would be designed with enough memory to store 300 years worth of observations locally. Many present-day systems purge old files based on expiration dates rather then whether the hard drive is full. ARCHIE-3 being a supercomputer once tasked with managing these satellites, as opposed to being a regular PC user, would know that and have no expectation that there would be any relevant data stored on the satellite until he started giving it instructions. If at that point he tripped an alarm that went back to ARCHIE-7 the latter would probably erase or partition out anything that ARCHIE-3 should not see. Keeping the existence of the space nations a secret is one of ARCHIE-7's primary functions, while for ARCHIE-3 searching for orbital survivors is more of a hobby-level interest.

As previously noted there is no alarm to trip; ARCHIE-3 has valid codes to give instructions to the satellite. Valid codes means no alarms. There is nothing to suggest that ARCHIE-7 could or would respond by in such a fashion, and that secrecy isn't part of its primary function, running the Moon Base is.

Valid access codes go a pretty good way towards getting you around firewalls and the like, compared to a random hacker trying to break into a network.

Except that valid access codes still get logged. Always. Any time you remotely access a system, even with a valid access, it gets logged. I frequently work remotely over VPN and my company knows every time I login, and what IP address I logged in from. The fact that my access is valid does not mean that this is treated as inconsequential. It helps to insure, among other things, that my login and password do not get used from multiple locations at once, which would be a giveaway that my account information had been stolen.

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

And where in God's name do you get the idea that the Coalition or anyone else on Earth is making use of their design or power armor, or that a power armor that was fairly mass produced for at least the military somehow equates to having reason to think someone acquired high level access codes to their networks?

If the CS is using tech formerly in the hands of NEMA (and they are), as is Free Quebec (and entire army of nice shiny Chromium Guardsmen) then that would be the first clue. The second would be the fact that they appear to be getting a lot of this tech from the ruins old NEMA and/or U.S./Canadian military bases. Indeed, the CS is visibly squatting on top of the Lone Star complex, and unless they downsized significantly during the Golden Age (highly unlikely based on what we know) there were likely a lot of other bases in what is now territory held by the CS and Free Quebec. Plus one could not rule out the possibility of other bases further afield being raided as well. The CAN Republic knows that ARCHIE-3 was at Aberdeen. It is not implausible to think that somebody would find the site (indeed Hagan Lonovitch stumbled onto it completely by accident!).

Again how is the CAN Republic supposed to know anyone is using its tech on the ground? A place it can't access, and again why would someone having access to their power armor equate to having high-level security codes? I have a car that doesn't mean I have the security codes for the car manufacturer, access to the secure networks isn't necessary for a factory to make something. You've an assembly line built to do the work and that requires zero access to secure networks or security codes.

Technically ARCHIE-3 can in fact reason like a human being, it started as a neural net and had the minds of hundreds of humans it was linked with as part of its education and can even sift through their memories that it still contains. ARCHIE-3 keeps Hagan around because it's not so good at originating ideas (hardly a problem only it has) and Hagan has proven such a helpful and enthusiastic partner. ARCHIE-3 is definitely sentient, ARCHIE-7 is not. ARCHIE-7 is just a really complex computer, purely machine, it does not rise to the level of sentient.

"Sentience" does not mean having the full-range of human emotions and thought processes. It simply means the ability to perceive and translate perception into motivation. ARCHIE-7 is explicitly stated as being capable of doing this. It even has authority to take actions independently of human operators specifically for this reason. It does not have much of a personality, because unlike ARCHIE-3 no effort was ever made to give it one. Since the survivors on the Moon lost ARCHIE-4, and 5-6 were apparently failures, they would have been unlikely to mess around building psionic interface helmets and trying to imprint 7 with a personality. But ARCHIE-3 is also still limited compared to a human. It is why he made so little progress for most of his post-rifts existence, only becoming truly effective once he got his first "idea man". Then Hagan came along and things really got rolling.

However, ARCHIE-7 does not need to have a single "idea man", because it has thousands of humans it can check in with if it needs creative input.

No, that's not what sentience means. ARCHIE-7 certainly isn't stated as having sentience and in fact the opposite is stated. No effort was made to give ARCHIE-3 a personality either, it developed that on its own. They did not develop the psionic interface helmet to give ARCHIE-3 a personality, they developed it to program it and upload information and see how effective the idea was.

You only get red flags if its something that its set up to test for. Computer log-ins don't generally complain that you logged in too long ago particularly when using valid codes. Especially in this case with a 'dumb' satellite as you yourself call it. It would have no reason to flag anything to worry about, particularly since you're assuming that it had to be built with a complete record of every access code and when it was used last, instead of having a list of valid codes and recording when they were used last with it.

Again, and I work in this industry, you are completely wrong here. Most present-day computing systems do maintain log records of when even valid logins have been used, including date/time stamp. Unless a system is very primitive (something we are definitely not talking about here!) then the log will contain every instance of access, the time stamp and the source IP of the access. The duration of the access is increasingly logged as well, and many systems (especially secure ones) will also log any commands executed on the system. This is especially true for modern telecommunications systems. I can go in, as an administrator, with a valid access, and make changes. But the fact that I went in would be logged, as would when I did so, and what commands I entered.

You are thinking about this from a user-side perspective. There are a great many things that are invisible to users. However, many secured systems do "complain" if your last access was far enough in the past and frequently require you to update your credentials. Most of the systems I access at work require this every 90 days, regardless of whether I have been in every day or have not logged in for more than a year.

And satellites aren't your regular computer where anyone expects such things let alone set it up to require you change your passcodes on a regular basis.

Sorry but that really fails the logic test. The Mechanoids being extra-dimensional would mean you'd have no reason to use older encryption codes, they're extradimensional they've nothing to give them any common factors with either older or newer encryption so might as well use what you've already got set up.

That was exactly what I said dude. ARCHIE-3 would be unlikely to bother developing new encryption (which you said he would do) to cope with the Mechanoids because they really would have no special knowledge of old Cyberworks encryption.

I said that ARCHIE-3 would not be using 300 year old Encryption when he's been having to deal with people like the CS across all that time. He wouldn't be using the old encryption because he's had to advance along with everyone else to keep ahead and wouldn't go back-pedaling to use the old stuff except where he had to and we've nothing to suggest that its necessary to use that satellite just that he needed the old log-in passcodes.

That really doesn't make any sense at all, you're talking a satellite, one apparently set up for no apparent reason as a transceiver capable of ground relaying of signals it has no reason to be analyzing data transmissions and deciding whether or not it doesn't like how they're encrypted. It got valid codes and so it sends what it's sent as a relay should, it's not going to be set up to do independent analysis like that.

That was only true of the dumb repeaters used decades ago in the real world. Most modern systems actually do track what type of content is being sent in the message portion of the data frames. This is considered necessary to ensure that someone does not use a secured system as a channel to deliver unauthorized content from one system to another. Otherwise a hacker could, for example, simply upload malware through the open pipe. Given that the CAN Republic has to worry about the other space nations, and, even worse, those nations could physically access the satellite just by flying up to it in a ship and tapping in, there would only be even more reason to do deep packet inspection on the content traversing the satellite. We are not talking 1960's tech here!

If ARCHIE-3 opened a session and started sending data with content type encrypted/unknown, that would most certainly raise a flag.

In your opinion, one based on modern satellite relays. We aren't talking a relay satellite we're talking something that's supposed to be a spy satellite, it's not supposed to be a relay satellite and yet is being used as one.

Can't see where you get that idea, ARCHIE-3 lived through the Cataclysm on the ground and all that trauma and has its issues but he's already got its issues settled in. The idea that there's a Moon colony isn't going to set off some kind of temper tantrum on its part

It has been stated in canon materials, repeatedly, that ARCHIE-3 is insane. That is why he has developed delusions of godhood and has decided that the human race is unworthy of self-government and needs him to take direct and absolute control over them. It is why he is experimenting with brain implants to give him the power to punish/control people at will. He cracked a long time ago when primitive Dark Ages humans proved so disappointing to him and from his long isolation from human contact. To find out that thousands of Cyberworks employees survived, and that the corporation still exists, but has never in 300 years attempted to contact him would be equivalent to a human being abandoned by their parents as a child, only to discover that the parents have been secretly living down the block for decades deliberately avoiding them.

At no point does being insane require such behavior as a given, and discovering that the organization still exists somewhere in no way shape or form means ARCHIE-3 would toss off some kind of tantrum when it knows everyone that knew about it is dead. It's insane but it's not going to rant and rave because some part of CAN survived, if anything it would begin plans to attempt to hook up with it or take control over it feeling as the only still 'living' member of CAN from before the Cataclysm only it should be in charge.

No, ARCHIE-7 is not a neural intelligence, it's purely a machine (Mutants In Orbit, page 62) and responds as a machine would. It has no emotions and is really inferior to ARCHIE-3 in many ways, being just a machine.

Mutants in Orbit, page 62: The acronym "ARCHIE" stands for: "Artificial, Robot, Cerebellum, Housing, Intellect, Experiment", followed by a version number. It is specifically stated that it is "based on the workings of the human brain". It goes further to state that ARCHIE-7 is "..capable of analyzing data in a subjective way and can act on subjective logic, hunches and speculation. This is particularly important in devising strategies and tactics against an enemy." Note that the "enemy" here consists of humans from the space stations and the alien Arkhons. So obviously ARCHIE-7 needs to be able to "think", and not just run programs.

Chaos Earth, pages 13-14: "...Cyberworks and its ARCHIE supercomputers - a trio of revolutionary neural cell, synthetic artificial intelligences that can learn, think and formulate subjective thought..."

You are confusing the term "neural intelligence" to equal "human-like personality". ARCHIE-3 has actually built of a number of neural intelligence robots, including Agent Goodson and some of the Shemarrians and other espionage robots that need to operate autonomously for extended periods. Other than Argent, most of these are not designed to have significant individual personalities, but they need to be able to think without following specific programming because ARCHIE-3 is using them in situations where he cannot control them in real-time and they may encounter situations requiring a degree of improvisation that even a well-programmed robot could not manage.

I am confusing nothing and I don't know where you get the idea I think neural intelligence equals human-like personality when I've said nothing of the sort. ARCHIE-7 is NOT a neural intelligence, it is explicitly stated not to be in Mutants In Oribt in the first sentences regarding it. It's stated to be a purely machine super-computer and not a neural intelligence like ARCHIE-3. Yes ARCHIE-3 can and even has built some Neural Intelligences but ARCHIE-7 isn't one as per Mutants In Orbit.

I will agree that if/when ARCHIE-3 lost its satellite communications it would be quite unhappy and frustrated but it surely has back-up plans in case it lost use of the satellite. It wouldn't cause ARCHIE-3 to set off on some kind of pointless war, particularly with Hagan there and Argent to speak sense on the remote chance ARCHIE-3 did consider it.

One of Hagan's biggest woes in life is that ARCHIE-3 does not always listen to him, especially when ARCHIE is feeling irritated over something. For now, ARCHIE cannot have any solid plans for replacing the satellite because not even he can launch anything into orbit. It is why finding the satellite was so valuable to him. Losing it would do major damage to ARCHIE's ongoing plans. Indeed, he would not even be able to communicate with Argent (not even ARCHIE's telemechanic range extends that far!). Given his past and present history of marginal sanity, it is not unreasonable to think that he might crack under the emotional strain of such a massive setback. His history of dealing with such things is not great.

He's not that cracked, and losing the satellite's a far cry from seeing the Great Cataclysm or having the Splugorth come along and murdered the village full of people he was protecting and had cared about.

Should complete that quote, where it notes ARCHIE-7 is just a machine and not alive, and that it's purpose is like Spock's Brain from that infamous episode with regards to the Moon base. ARCHIE-7's primary focus is controlling everything in the facility and while it's part of the planning for the defense of the base it's not as capable of things as ARCHIE-3 is.

Technically the only things that ARCHIE-3 can do that ARCHIE-7 cannot is experience emotion and go insane. Otherwise they are virtually identical, and it is explicitly stated that ARCHIE-7 is "more sophisticated" than ARCHIE-3. In it's case though, the sophistication is measured in terms of it's efficiency at running the CAN Republic, in cooperation with humans, without feeling the need to implant explosive chips inside their heads in order to directly control them. It is less likely to go on a rampage just because humans fall short of it's expectations (which is exactly what ARCHIE-3 has done) since it is emotionless. But this is not cause to assume that the "more sophisticated" system would be less effective at doing the job it has specifically been tasked with (preserving the security of the CAN Republic and maintaining the Earth quarantine) than ARCHIE-3 would be at improvisation. ARCHIE-7 is not making things up as it goes along here, and it has no emotions that might cause it to take pity on ARCHIE-3. Hence it would have no reason to perceive him as anything other than another potential threat from planetside.

No, they aren't virtually the same and ARCHIE-3 can do a great deal more than ARCHIE-7. You keep crediting ARCHIE-7 with self-awareness and a sentient existence it doesn't have for one. It's just a computer, and while it's said to be more sophisticated that doesn't make it superior to ARCHIE-3. It has no expectations, makes no judgments about humans, it just runs the moon. ARCHIE-3 is fully sentient and alive, to the point it actually has ISP and PPE and human-style psionics and does not require power in order to survive. ARCHIE-7's lack of sentience and curiosity is a weakness compared to ARCHIE-3, because as we saw ARCHIE-3 acted promptly when Hagan interfaced with its systems, ARCHIE-7 just sits back saying nothing while ARCHIE-3 makes use of the CAN's spy satellite. The upside of being sentient and having curiosity and initiative.

[Nightmask]

Sorry but no. You insist the satellite is using tight-beam transmissions and even with the moon near the horizon relative to the satellite that's well above the surface of the Earth and with the most generous of dish angles straight down towards north america is simply not physically possible for a satellite intended to talk to the moon.

Only if the satellite remains angled in order to provide transmission service exclusively in that direction. When ARCHIE-3 discovered the satellite in what he thought was the "wrong" orbit, he would have sent course "correction" instructions to make it adjust its flight angle to re-aim the transmitters at Earth.

And how exactly do you think ARCHIE-3 can give instructions to a satellite to aim towards him so he can speak to it if it's not pointed in his direction to receive the signal?

And a good chance no one will pay attention either or potentially ignore the red flag. Such as happened when that lawyer with an anti-biotic resistant strain of TB decided the law didn't matter to him (ironic given his specialty was suing people who did just what he did) when he learned about it in another country and decided to slip back into the US via Canada after just getting married (again ironic given his wife's father was a high-level doctor in the Center For Disease Control) and the border guard saw the flag on him and waved him through anyway.

There is a good chance a human might let it slide. But even they would have to wonder why the satellite's behavior changed. That would entail running a system check for malfunctions (something that is usually done on a regular basis with satellites anyway, since it is nuisance to deal with them if their receivers go down) and when it was determined that the satellite was not malfunctioning, the next step in troubleshooting is the check the access and command logs. At that point ARCHIE-3's accessing of the satellite would get noticed. Mind you, this is the sort of thing that ARCHIE-7 probably does as part of it's standard maintenance activities.

Probably being the key word, making it an assumption not supported by the material.

As noted the moon is never in a direction general enough for the satellite's dish to reasonably point towards the Earth and wouldn't have the means to correct enough to aim nearly straight down towards the actual surface. The satellite wouldn't even have a dish pointed to where it could receive a transmission from ARCHIE-3 to make attempts to alter its course.

You are forgetting that the whole reason that the satellite is there is monitor Earth. It most definitely has receivers aimed at the planet at all times. Likewise, it would also have separate uplink receivers to receive instructions sent down to it from the Moon in higher orbit. You are confusing things partly by your assumption that there is a "dish". In many modern communications satellites these are either very small or replaced entirely by antennas. This is a communications satellite, not the Voyager probes. Since it is expected to receive signals from Earth and the Moon it would have multiple receivers. Odds favor it having multiple transmitters too, so that it could itself serve as a relay between the Moon other ships/satellites in Earth orbit.

I'm not forgetting anything, although you seem to be doing so. One being that receivers can't transmit, another being we're talking about a spy satellite and those things have dedicated systems aimed to look at a particular area which is separate from the systems that actually control the satellite. You keep insisting that the CAN is so perfect in its paranoia after all so they certainly wouldn't have a broad-reception antenna but a directional one instead so that no one on the ground would have a chance to pick up the signal.

As previously noted there is no alarm to trip; ARCHIE-3 has valid codes to give instructions to the satellite. Valid codes means no alarms. There is nothing to suggest that ARCHIE-7 could or would respond by in such a fashion, and that secrecy isn't part of its primary function, running the Moon Base is.

Rifts Aftermath, page 85: "ARCHIE's counterpart on the moon knows about the signals coming from Earth, but, in accordance with its programming, it will not respond in order to prevent the Earth from discovering their existence."

Which is to say, it is one of ARCHIE-7's programmed functions to conceal the existence of the space colonies from Earth. And since it has no emotions, there is no sense of camaraderie with its "brother" to cause it to violate its orders and reach out to him.

Also, valid access codes still get logged, as I keep repeating over and over. Once ARCHIE-3 started mucking around with the satellite and ARCHIE-7 determined that it was not a system malfunction, the next step would have been to check the access logs, at which point it would have noted that ARCHIE-3 logged into the satellite's systems.

Clearly ARCHIE-3's messing with anything though, since ARCHIE-7 hasn't told anyone and because of the programming you insist on bringing up CAN'T do anything like shut ARCHIE-3 out of the satellite as that would alert him to something fishy going on.

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

It is probable that ARCHIE-3 was at least asked to update his credentials, since it had been a very long time since his last access to the satellite (so far as he thinks). This is standard in secure computing systems even today and would not have concerned ARCHIE-3 in the slightest. However, the credential update would then be forwarded to the domain controller (ARCHIE-7) to update the system access profile. ARCHIE-3, unaware that there is another working ARCHIE out there, would know this too and would not worry about it. As long as the satellite accepts his credentials he would have no cause to give it further thought. However, ARCHIE-7 would immediately notice that ARCHIE-3's credentials were just used, and updated. Just like its "brother" on the ground, it was not expecting another ARCHIE to be online, so the access would be noteworthy.

Clearly the access isn't noteworthy since ARCHIE-7 hasn't told anyone about it, however much you want to insist it must have we've been given no indication that he's done anything but go 'gee there's a user logging into Satellite q-34 from Earth, okay noted and logged'.

Again how is the CAN Republic supposed to know anyone is using its tech on the ground? A place it can't access, and again why would someone having access to their power armor equate to having high-level security codes? I have a car that doesn't mean I have the security codes for the car manufacturer, access to the secure networks isn't necessary for a factory to make something. You've an assembly line built to do the work and that requires zero access to secure networks or security codes.

The CAN Republic, and the rest of the orbital nations, have the Earth under surveillance at all times. This is why the satellite is there in the first place. The space nations are carefully monitoring anyone who might be able launch anything into space.

Now, they know that Earth got trashed during the Great Cataclysm. The simple fact that the new nations are using what is visibly pre-rifts technology, rather than something new and home grown, raises the obvious question of where they got it. To use your analogy, the CS and Free Quebec do not just have the car, they might very well have the factory too (this is, in fact, the case). What you might also note from canon materials is that these factories were often co-located with military installations. ARCHIE-3 was running inside the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a military base, and he had manufacturing facilities on-site. In order to cut their risk in the event of war, the old United States (and other nations) tended to build at least some of their manufacturing capabilities directly inside their bases. If someone (like Hagan) stumbled across Aberdeen (or NORAD) and found an intact comm system, or managed a data retrieval from a "dead" ARCHIE then they might very well gain the access credentials for the Cyberworks satellite network.

Sorry but you're foundations just are too shaky to shore up there. You're drawing the assumption that all these factories are at military bases, that all these factories at military bases are all in possession of high-level access codes to the ARCHIE-X network, and that those in space would think that just from sighting a SAMAS on the ground that they must have access to their old security codes. On top of which while insisting that they must know these codes still exist no one bothered to change them, something you insist because of their paranoia couldn't be possible.

No, that's not what sentience means. ARCHIE-7 certainly isn't stated as having sentience and in fact the opposite is stated. No effort was made to give ARCHIE-3 a personality either, it developed that on its own. They did not develop the psionic interface helmet to give ARCHIE-3 a personality, they developed it to program it and upload information and see how effective the idea was.

Again, you are confusing "sentient" with "human". Most animals are sentient. We just do not attribute human levels of thought or emotion to them. ARCHIE-7 is explicitly stated as being able to make assumptions and decisions on its own, without human intervention. That is sentience.

ARCHIE-3 acquired his more human-like behaviors due to the use of the psionic interface helmet (RSB1, page 62). Given that ARCHIE-7 has not similarly "mutated", it is likely that the CAN survivors on the Moon did not employ the same technology when they implemented it. But then, they did not build ARCHIE-7 to test the limits of artificial intelligence, as was the case with ARCHIE-3. They had a much more specific purpose for building it.

No, I am not confusing sentient with human so quit insisting that I am. Being able to make assumptions and decisions does not make something sentient, the Mars Rovers can study their environment and make limited decisions without human intervention that doesn't make them sentient.

And satellites aren't your regular computer where anyone expects such things let alone set it up to require you change your passcodes on a regular basis.

They are actually under much tighter restrictions, especially ones being used for espionage. The absolute last thing the Pentagon wants is Google or Wikileaks hacking into their satellites! ARCHIE has system level access, but even that level of access would be logged and noted. You think that a ground station in Iran can just tap into Defense Department satellites and not be noticed even if they stole a valid set of credentials?

Do you think the perfectly paranoid moon people you speak of would leave a satellite set up where it could be accessed from the ground when they could ensure it would be physically impossible to do so? Because unlike the Pentagon on the ground being on the Moon the CAN Republic could set the satellites up to be incapable of receiving or acting in signals from the ground and solely record them.

I said that ARCHIE-3 would not be using 300 year old Encryption when he's been having to deal with people like the CS across all that time. He wouldn't be using the old encryption because he's had to advance along with everyone else to keep ahead and wouldn't go back-pedaling to use the old stuff except where he had to and we've nothing to suggest that its necessary to use that satellite just that he needed the old log-in passcodes.

And I said it does not ultimately matter either way. If ARCHIE-3 used old encryption then ARCHIE-7 could read everything he sent effortlessly. If he used new encryption then the satellite would note that the message content of the data transfers was of encrypted/unknown type. This takes us back to my original question of how much data the CAN Republic is snooping by eavesdropping on ARCHIE-3. It is worth noting that ARCHIE-3 has very little imagination, and Hagan is not a cryptographer by trade. It is fairly likely that any new encryption that ARCHIE-3 develops would be along a predictable evolutionary path that ARCHIE-7 and CAN would be able to decrypt eventually.

Lots of faulty assumptions in there. You're assuming the satellite must be able to take note of what type of encryption is used on the data, that it must be something that would make someone take notice, that someone must be noticing it, and that an intelligence like ARCHIE-3 couldn't possibly have come up with or found in 300 years encryptions unrelated to those it had been installed with 300 years ago when it was created.

In your opinion, one based on modern satellite relays. We aren't talking a relay satellite we're talking something that's supposed to be a spy satellite, it's not supposed to be a relay satellite and yet is being used as one.

So let me get this straight: you think that spy satellites have looser security than communications satellites?

I think that by what you keep insisting on if it had higher security than average then it wouldn't be capable of receiving and acting on signals from Earth in any fashion and yet it does, so clearly somewhere in your insistence it must have higher security it doesn't actually.

At no point does being insane require such behavior as a given, and discovering that the organization still exists somewhere in no way shape or form means ARCHIE-3 would toss off some kind of tantrum when it knows everyone that knew about it is dead. It's insane but it's not going to rant and rave because some part of CAN survived, if anything it would begin plans to attempt to hook up with it or take control over it feeling as the only still 'living' member of CAN from before the Cataclysm only it should be in charge.

Which takes us back to the rampage thing. At least on Earth, ARCHIE can take action at his convenience. But he has gotten very impatient and is moving very fast now that he has Hagan. In stark contrast, his actions were almost lethargic prior to that. At least part of ARCHIE's motivation is anger and resentment, even towards the people on Earth who knew nothing of him. He has been killing them every time they even remotely inconvenience him, demonstrating a serious homicidal streak. His reaction towards his parent company, which has been ignoring him for 300 years, would not be pretty. But he cannot even get to them, which would be bound to drive him nuts.

Now, in fairness, if ARCHIE would be furious, I would imagine that Karl Prosek would probably pop a blood vessel if he ever found out that the space nations were out there and spying on the CS from above all this time! Most other nations would not be happy either.

Not seeing where you're getting the idea that ARCHIE-3 is killing people with such alacrity, particularly after he made the mistake of bringing the small contingent of Mechanoids to Earth he acted to stop them because in the end he wants to protect humanity or at least master it.

I am confusing nothing and I don't know where you get the idea I think neural intelligence equals human-like personality when I've said nothing of the sort. ARCHIE-7 is NOT a neural intelligence, it is explicitly stated not to be in Mutants In Oribt in the first sentences regarding it. It's stated to be a purely machine super-computer and not a neural intelligence like ARCHIE-3. Yes ARCHIE-3 can and even has built some Neural Intelligences but ARCHIE-7 isn't one as per Mutants In Orbit.

Again, you are conflating the concept of a "neural intelligence" with a human-like entity. The canon is very specific that ARCHIE 3 & 7 are of the same physical design, right down to the brain-in-a-bread-box deal. However, ARCHIE-3 also has neural intelligence Shemarrians that do not even come close to ARCHIE (or Argent) on a human-like personality scale. "Neural intelligence" is a hardware design, meant to mimic a living brain. The text does very specifically state that. It does not state that every machine built around a neural intelligence design framework is "alive" by human standards.

Once again, no I am not. The canon is quite clear that ARCHIE-3 and ARCHIE-7 are NOT of the same physical design, it explicitly notes that ARCHIE-7 is pure machine and not a neural intelligence like ARCHIE-3. You are confusing what you think neural intelligence means with what it really is meant to me. At a minimum Palladium doesn't define it that way, so no matter what you insist ARCHIE-7 isn't a neural intelligence, it's just a very complex pure machine and super-computer as the text says.

He's not that cracked, and losing the satellite's a far cry from seeing the Great Cataclysm or having the Splugorth come along and murdered the village full of people he was protecting and had cared about.

Let's put it this way: if ARCHIE lost access to that satellite he would not even be able to maintain communications with Argent and the Titan Robotics plant in the Manistique Imperium. He would lose the ability to communicate with his Skelebot spies inside the CS armies and Chi-Town. He would not even be able to maintain communications with his Shemarrians spread out along the length of the Eastern Seaboard. In short, it would completely wreck most of the work he undertaken ever since Hagan became his idea man. His plans would be set back, likely by decades. Gaining control of the CS or getting revenge on the Splugorth would have to be pushed even further into the future. Being emotional (and insane), it is unlikely that ARCHIE would cope well were that to happen.

All the more so because he is more than a little paranoid, and losing control of his now widely-dispersed robots would greatly increase his risk of being discovered.

ARCHIE-3 built up its stuff without the satellite, it would adapt if it lost the satellite and definitely isn't foolish enough to not have plans to make up for its loss.

No, they aren't virtually the same and ARCHIE-3 can do a great deal more than ARCHIE-7. You keep crediting ARCHIE-7 with self-awareness and a sentient existence it doesn't have for one. It's just a computer, and while it's said to be more sophisticated that doesn't make it superior to ARCHIE-3. It has no expectations, makes no judgments about humans, it just runs the moon. ARCHIE-3 is fully sentient and alive, to the point it actually has ISP and PPE and human-style psionics and does not require power in order to survive. ARCHIE-7's lack of sentience and curiosity is a weakness compared to ARCHIE-3, because as we saw ARCHIE-3 acted promptly when Hagan interfaced with its systems, ARCHIE-7 just sits back saying nothing while ARCHIE-3 makes use of the CAN's spy satellite. The upside of being sentient and having curiosity and initiative.

A good computer can beat a human at chess. ARCHIE-7 is self-aware. Indeed, it is specifically stated that it considers the entire CAN Republic, including the humans living inside of it, to be it's "body" which it must defend and which it does by making decisions and plans. ARCHIE-3 was in fact very similar in the beginning. The difference is in dispassion. ARCHIE-7 has no emotions, and thus does not feel any urge to take actions outside of its immediate self-interest. It is tasked with protecting itself, the CAN Republic and with preserving the quarantine of Earth. Stats are not provided for ARCHIE-7, so we do not actually know whether it has psionic abilities or not. However, it does have a similar physical brain design to ARCHIE-3, so it is not inconceivable that it could develop them as they are technically members of the same "race". It is younger, and it is not indicated whether the same psionic technology was used to program it (probably not given its lack of emotion).

Again, go and actually read the book. ARCHIE-7 is NOT self-aware, it's just a dumb machine. It has programmed imperatives relative to the CAN Republic but it isn't sentient nor is it self-aware, and you're generating the idea that it can from a poor grasp of the language involved reading more into it than is actually intended. If someone said a CS Skelebot considered anyone not of the CS an enemy to be destroyed that doesn't make it sentient, that's simply the writer for ease of convenience anthropomorphizing the robot. You are anthropomorphizing ARCHIE-7 ascribing to it characteristics like sentience and self-awareness that it doesn't have.

ARCHIE-7 is the computer playing an ugly game of chess. The CAN Republic (and by extension ARCHIE-7) is under direct attack by external enemies. So it has to (and does according to MiO, page 62) form strategies against its enemies. Complacency is not a virtue. As far as Earth is concerned its mandate is much simpler - keep everything down there from getting out or discovering the existence of the space nations.

My supposition though is that ARCHIE-7 might be doing nothing in response to ARCHIE-3 borrowing its satellite could be because it gets more mileage out of allowing him to do so. If, in fact, it can snoop the traffic ARCHIE-3 sends through the satellite, then it would be getting all kinds of useful data at absolutely no cost to itself or risk to the CAN Republic. ARCHIE-3 is using the satellite to send instructions to and receives sensory data from his many robots. He forwards technology schematics to his hidden manufacturing plants. Heck, he even has Skelebot spies inside Chi-Town!

This is all much better data return than any spy satellite and ARCHIE-7 could be getting it all free of charge. On the other hand, if it were to take action, such as by locking ARCHIE-3 out of the satellite, then it would be revealing itself, which it does not want to do. Allowing a freeloader to steal broadband is a trivial cost if you can copy all of their downloads after all.

Finally, ARCHIE-3 reacted to Hagan because he was initially depressed and isolating, and then changed his response when Hagan impressed him with his use of Telemechanics. He would still be sitting in his bunker brooding if Hagan had not been able to psionically interface with him. ARCHIE-7 has a bustling city inside its "body" and that is its priority. It has more reason to play a voyeuristic game as regards ARCHIE-3.

[/quote]

ARCHIE-3 was sitting at home with its old designer busily amusing itself when Hagan came along, at which point encountering someone who could communicate with machines and it intrigued him especially all the ideas it saw in Hagan's head. This quickly led to the old designer getting the heave-ho when he didn't like being displaced and Hagan replacing him. Meanwhile ARCHIE-7 being non-sentient and programmed to maintain the moon base does what a good computer does; it monitors things and acts as necessary to see that things run smoothly and efficiently. It has no will or self-awareness to question anything or act only to monitor and adjust things as necessary inside the scope of its programming.

[Nightmask]

Very well thought out arguments Psionycx. And I must definitely agree with you that any attempt to remove ARCHIE-3's link to the world, or his discovery of CAN will definitely put the eastern part of North America in the path of his rage. His emotional intelligence is that of a child, who are not known for their ability to control impulses and act accordingly to reason and logic. As you have pointed out, his past history shows that he takes setbacks very poorly, and usually with a good dosage of "kill everyone around me before sulking in my room." I actually find his behavior towards Hagan in Sourcebook 2 to be very out-of-character with how fearful for Hagan's safety he is - although it was also self-preservation as if the Mechanoids had discovered his link to the hated humanoids they would probably react quite violently towards him.

ARCHIE-3 isn't without positive feelings and qualities. By that point Hagan was a trusted friend and not some tool, of course ARCHIE-3 acted to protect him. Yes some self-preservation being involved didn't hurt but it wasn't all about self-preservation.

There's also no probably about how the Mechanoids would react to a non-humanoid that's friends with a humanoid; they'd exterminate it. They're all quite binary in that regard, if you're a friend of humanoids you're a traitor to die with them.

[strtkwr]

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

OK, I have to take exception to this. In my job, if a user ID is not used within 30 days (or less depending on the system), it is suspended, and after 60 days it is deleted. So you are telling me that military security 200 years in the future is less advanced than a typical corporation today?

[Nightmask]

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

OK, I have to take exception to this. In my job, if a user ID is not used within 30 days (or less depending on the system), it is suspended, and after 60 days it is deleted. So you are telling me that military security 200 years in the future is less advanced than a typical corporation today?

No, Palladium is saying that because ARCHIE-3's 300 year old pass codes worked just fine on a brand new CAN republic satellite and ARCHIE-7 apparently knows it and says nothing to its creators and doesn't do anything. I'm just pointing out reasons for why the satellite can be used by someone with 300 year old access codes and no one's alarmed by it.

[strtkwr]

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

OK, I have to take exception to this. In my job, if a user ID is not used within 30 days (or less depending on the system), it is suspended, and after 60 days it is deleted. So you are telling me that military security 200 years in the future is less advanced than a typical corporation today?

No, Palladium is saying that because ARCHIE-3's 300 year old pass codes worked just fine on a brand new CAN republic satellite and ARCHIE-7 apparently knows it and says nothing to its creators and doesn't do anything. I'm just pointing out reasons for why the satellite can be used by someone with 300 year old access codes and no one's alarmed by it.

Well, if an access code is still live and can be used to access the system after 300 years of inactivity, then their security procedures are severly lacking. I have a hard time believing that they fail to live up to even the most basic of access security measures.

[FreelancerMar]

One also has to realize one more important fact.

Where Computers and Robotics are concerned, One does not have to be alive in order to be sentient.

One can point at ST-TNG's Commander Data as a reference. Data is most certaintly Sentient but is also not a living creature.

Think about that for a bit.

[Nightmask]

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

OK, I have to take exception to this. In my job, if a user ID is not used within 30 days (or less depending on the system), it is suspended, and after 60 days it is deleted. So you are telling me that military security 200 years in the future is less advanced than a typical corporation today?

No, Palladium is saying that because ARCHIE-3's 300 year old pass codes worked just fine on a brand new CAN republic satellite and ARCHIE-7 apparently knows it and says nothing to its creators and doesn't do anything. I'm just pointing out reasons for why the satellite can be used by someone with 300 year old access codes and no one's alarmed by it.

Well, if an access code is still live and can be used to access the system after 300 years of inactivity, then their security procedures are severly lacking. I have a hard time believing that they fail to live up to even the most basic of access security measures.

Well that's just how it is. It may seem ridiculously lax but it's right there in the book, ARCHIE-3 only had 300 year old access codes and yet they work just fine on the satellite and ARCHIE-7 considers them valid, so its creators even over that 300 year span simply never set things up to invalidate those codes. But really, if they're say backdoor access codes of course they'd never go out of date because you don't set up such access to expire.

[Nightmask]

One also has to realize one more important fact.

Where Computers and Robotics are concerned, One does not have to be alive in order to be sentient.

One can point at ST-TNG's Commander Data as a reference. Data is most certaintly Sentient but is also not a living creature.

Think about that for a bit.

They have to reach a level of awareness of their own existence and be able to question, ARCHIE-7 is not sentient in spite of its intelligence and ability to function as it is not aware of its existence and only acts to fulfill its programming. ARCHIE-3 is aware of its existence and formulates its own plans and desires. ARCHIE-7 understandably is prevented from having the kind of complexity that would give rise to self-awareness as its creators don't want to risk it turning on them when their survival depends on it (the back-up systems and people required to operate them are woefully below standards as noted in the book).

[Pepsi Jedi]

Man I'd have loved to have gotten in on this.. but I haven't read the thread for like.. a day.. and there's about 50 posts, real big ones... and that's too much to read and reply to.LOL

[Nightmask]

Hmmm, got so caught in responding didn't even think how totally off-topic this is and if it's not already got its own thread should be put in its own thread rather than filling up this one that simply wants to know where the various ARCHIE units are or have been at.

[strtkwr]

Being logged is not the same as setting up a red flag or causing anyone to be concerned. Without reason to reach a level of actual concern (ARCHIE-3 actually using the satellite as a relay to log into ARCHIE-7) there's no reason for ARCHIE-7 to do more than go 'hmmm, that log-in hasn't been used in forever but oh well it's valid'.

OK, I have to take exception to this. In my job, if a user ID is not used within 30 days (or less depending on the system), it is suspended, and after 60 days it is deleted. So you are telling me that military security 200 years in the future is less advanced than a typical corporation today?

No, Palladium is saying that because ARCHIE-3's 300 year old pass codes worked just fine on a brand new CAN republic satellite and ARCHIE-7 apparently knows it and says nothing to its creators and doesn't do anything. I'm just pointing out reasons for why the satellite can be used by someone with 300 year old access codes and no one's alarmed by it.

Well, if an access code is still live and can be used to access the system after 300 years of inactivity, then their security procedures are severly lacking. I have a hard time believing that they fail to live up to even the most basic of access security measures.

Well that's just how it is. It may seem ridiculously lax but it's right there in the book, ARCHIE-3 only had 300 year old access codes and yet they work just fine on the satellite and ARCHIE-7 considers them valid, so its creators even over that 300 year span simply never set things up to invalidate those codes. But really, if they're say backdoor access codes of course they'd never go out of date because you don't set up such access to expire.

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

[Nightmask]

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

Isn't the entire idea behind a back door to NOT set off red flags? Don't programmers who put in back doors explicitly program things so that security systems ignore them? So why couldn't part of the code be to put the back door into everything that's built? Much as you want to insist otherwise these are actual RL computer issues and things people actually do. This isn't something beyond belief that it could happen, it happens all the time. What you think they're going to create perfectly secure software? How many iterations has Windows gone through and still can be hacked? The Golden Age doesn't mean Perfect Age, and humanity hasn't been shown having improved any in those centuries so the idea that things aren't perfectly secure isn't so hard to believe.

[strtkwr]

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

Isn't the entire idea behind a back door to NOT set off red flags? Don't programmers who put in back doors explicitly program things so that security systems ignore them? So why couldn't part of the code be to put the back door into everything that's built? Much as you want to insist otherwise these are actual RL computer issues and things people actually do. This isn't something beyond belief that it could happen, it happens all the time. What you think they're going to create perfectly secure software? How many iterations has Windows gone through and still can be hacked? The Golden Age doesn't mean Perfect Age, and humanity hasn't been shown having improved any in those centuries so the idea that things aren't perfectly secure isn't so hard to believe.

Maybe, but the idea behind the backdoor is to not get caught. But it states in the book that Archie 3 has gotten caught. Archie 7 knows about the signal. In real life, once the hack as been discovered, they backtrack it to where the breach occurred. This is part of the reason you have security patches. To fix known issues. So either they are dumber than programmers of today, or it does not make sense.

[Nightmask]

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

Isn't the entire idea behind a back door to NOT set off red flags? Don't programmers who put in back doors explicitly program things so that security systems ignore them? So why couldn't part of the code be to put the back door into everything that's built? Much as you want to insist otherwise these are actual RL computer issues and things people actually do. This isn't something beyond belief that it could happen, it happens all the time. What you think they're going to create perfectly secure software? How many iterations has Windows gone through and still can be hacked? The Golden Age doesn't mean Perfect Age, and humanity hasn't been shown having improved any in those centuries so the idea that things aren't perfectly secure isn't so hard to believe.

Maybe, but the idea behind the backdoor is to not get caught. But it states in the book that Archie 3 has gotten caught. Archie 7 knows about the signal. In real life, once the hack as been discovered, they backtrack it to where the breach occurred. This is part of the reason you have security patches. To fix known issues. So either they are dumber than programmers of today, or it does not make sense.

ARCHIE-3 isn't really caught though, since it's not a hack it is as far as the computer is concerned a valid access code and while noted and recorded isn't something to cause a red flag. Also as far as RL goes until you actually know you've got a security issue you don't patch it, and ARCHIE-7 isn't informing anyone because its software doesn't instruct him to inform anyone about someone using that access code. Now if humans were in the position to review logs and notice it then certainly they'd look into closing it but ARCHIE-3 hasn't done anything that rises to the level of concern that would result in ARCHIE-7 telling anyone.

[strtkwr]

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

Isn't the entire idea behind a back door to NOT set off red flags? Don't programmers who put in back doors explicitly program things so that security systems ignore them? So why couldn't part of the code be to put the back door into everything that's built? Much as you want to insist otherwise these are actual RL computer issues and things people actually do. This isn't something beyond belief that it could happen, it happens all the time. What you think they're going to create perfectly secure software? How many iterations has Windows gone through and still can be hacked? The Golden Age doesn't mean Perfect Age, and humanity hasn't been shown having improved any in those centuries so the idea that things aren't perfectly secure isn't so hard to believe.

Maybe, but the idea behind the backdoor is to not get caught. But it states in the book that Archie 3 has gotten caught. Archie 7 knows about the signal. In real life, once the hack as been discovered, they backtrack it to where the breach occurred. This is part of the reason you have security patches. To fix known issues. So either they are dumber than programmers of today, or it does not make sense.

ARCHIE-3 isn't really caught though, since it's not a hack it is as far as the computer is concerned a valid access code and while noted and recorded isn't something to cause a red flag. Also as far as RL goes until you actually know you've got a security issue you don't patch it, and ARCHIE-7 isn't informing anyone because its software doesn't instruct him to inform anyone about someone using that access code. Now if humans were in the position to review logs and notice it then certainly they'd look into closing it but ARCHIE-3 hasn't done anything that rises to the level of concern that would result in ARCHIE-7 telling anyone.

Again, however, you have two issues. Either he is using a 300 year old ID to access the system, which by even the most minimal of security standards of today should have aged off the system ages ago, OR, he is using a backdoor which Archie 7 should be able to detect since the computer is aware of the communication. So either Archie 3 should not be able to access it, or Archie 7 should be flagging it as a non-standard access, for someone to look into further.

Now, I have a hard time believing that their security would be so lax to allow for either one. After all, if someone can hack your system, they can shut down your life support. I would imagine that this would be a pretty big problem in space. But I am hooked on oxygen, so maybe that is just my bias.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Doesn't Archie 3 want to take over humanity for their own good? Not just to MUAHAAHA over them?

[Pepsi Jedi]

Just because it says it in the book does not make it logical or reasonable. If they are backdoor codes, then I would think that they would not expire, but then that raises a whole new host of problems. Afterall, if Archie 7 is aware of a communication coming in a back door, that should be a huge red flag right there for the computer to grab on to. And how would Archie 3 know of a backdoor code to a new satellite after he was out of the loop 300 years? Don't they update their software on occasion? Maybe they are still using Microsoft Windows 95, with none of the security patches applied. That would make as much sense.

Either way, the security is lax beyond belief.

Isn't the entire idea behind a back door to NOT set off red flags? Don't programmers who put in back doors explicitly program things so that security systems ignore them? So why couldn't part of the code be to put the back door into everything that's built? Much as you want to insist otherwise these are actual RL computer issues and things people actually do. This isn't something beyond belief that it could happen, it happens all the time. What you think they're going to create perfectly secure software? How many iterations has Windows gone through and still can be hacked? The Golden Age doesn't mean Perfect Age, and humanity hasn't been shown having improved any in those centuries so the idea that things aren't perfectly secure isn't so hard to believe.

Maybe, but the idea behind the backdoor is to not get caught. But it states in the book that Archie 3 has gotten caught. Archie 7 knows about the signal. In real life, once the hack as been discovered, they backtrack it to where the breach occurred. This is part of the reason you have security patches. To fix known issues. So either they are dumber than programmers of today, or it does not make sense.

ARCHIE-3 isn't really caught though, since it's not a hack it is as far as the computer is concerned a valid access code and while noted and recorded isn't something to cause a red flag. Also as far as RL goes until you actually know you've got a security issue you don't patch it, and ARCHIE-7 isn't informing anyone because its software doesn't instruct him to inform anyone about someone using that access code. Now if humans were in the position to review logs and notice it then certainly they'd look into closing it but ARCHIE-3 hasn't done anything that rises to the level of concern that would result in ARCHIE-7 telling anyone.

Again, however, you have two issues. Either he is using a 300 year old ID to access the system, which by even the most minimal of security standards of today should have aged off the system ages ago, OR, he is using a backdoor which Archie 7 should be able to detect since the computer is aware of the communication. So either Archie 3 should not be able to access it, or Archie 7 should be flagging it as a non-standard access, for someone to look into further.

Now, I have a hard time believing that their security would be so lax to allow for either one. After all, if someone can hack your system, they can shut down your life support. I would imagine that this would be a pretty big problem in space. But I am hooked on oxygen, so maybe that is just my bias.

Doesn't Archie have telemechanics or something? Or am I misremembering?

[strtkwr]

Super-telemechanics. A unique ability of Archie 3 to communicate with machines he created. Not sure that would apply here.

[Nightmask]

Okay, we are definitely going in circles here. But for the last time, please re-read MiO page 62, because you are completely missing some key statements.

Most notably: "It's design parameters are to function as the brain of a giant environmental complex that it sees as it physical body."

In other words, ARCHIE-7 does have self-awareness. The same self-awareness that ARCHIE-3 has towards his "body". The difference is that ARCHIE-7 has a far less developed ego. For the first few centuries so did ARCHIE-3. It took him time to get from slightly-naive-supercomputer to world-conquering-god-wannabee. Of course, unlike ARCHIE-7, he has been without human operators for most of his existence. Unfortunately, those circumstances account for his manic-depressive disorder, paranoia and homicidal tendencies. I mean come on, he slaughtered the first post-rifts humans he found because they were too primitive to understand him! Nowadays he has taken to implanting people with explosive brain implants that also allow him to inflict pain on them at will! He is not an especially humane entity!

Again no ARCHIE-7 does NOT have self-awareness, and for the last time actually read the page in its entirety and look at both the actual language as well as the context. The book goes to obvious lengths to make it clear that ARCHIE-7 is not sentient and not self-aware and is just a machine. The text even says that ARCHIE-7 is just a machine. The reference to ARCHIE-7 as the brain of the Moon colony is an analogy and not meant to be taken literally, the same with regards to its knowing what's going on to a degree throughout the station. A robot in a factory has to be aware of those things related to its function in order to do its job, that doesn't make it self-aware. You're confusing things thinking because a human is aware of its environment that anything that's aware is sentient and self-aware and that's not true.

As for Hagan, I do think ARCHIE has grown fond of him, if only because he is such an effective idea man. A large part of ARCHIE's forward progress in his schemes can be directly attributed to Hagan's creativity. If Hagan were less effective then ARCHIE would probably have ditched him by now. Their relationship has become symbiotic. Plus Hagan is just as big of a sociopath as ARCHIE, which puts them in the same frame of mind most of the time. Hagan certainly has yet to do anything but help ARCHIE's plans for world conquest, even when ARCHIE tortures or kills other humans.

In the matter of the Mechanoids, I agree that they see things in a binary manner. ARCHIE's plans to rule humanity would be repugnant to them because they believe that all humanoids must be destroyed, not conquered. Thus they are in natural opposition to ARCHIE even though he is a non-humanoid machine himself.

ARCHIE-3's more than just fond of Hagan, he rates Hagan alongside his 'son' in importance and value. Hagan's a sympathetic soul that ARCHIE-3 finds comfort in because they get along so well together, if anything would set ARCHIE-3 off in a Mechanoid's style act of destruction it'd be either his death or the death of his son.

[Nightmask]

Maybe, but the idea behind the backdoor is to not get caught. But it states in the book that Archie 3 has gotten caught. Archie 7 knows about the signal. In real life, once the hack as been discovered, they backtrack it to where the breach occurred. This is part of the reason you have security patches. To fix known issues. So either they are dumber than programmers of today, or it does not make sense.

ARCHIE-3 isn't really caught though, since it's not a hack it is as far as the computer is concerned a valid access code and while noted and recorded isn't something to cause a red flag. Also as far as RL goes until you actually know you've got a security issue you don't patch it, and ARCHIE-7 isn't informing anyone because its software doesn't instruct him to inform anyone about someone using that access code. Now if humans were in the position to review logs and notice it then certainly they'd look into closing it but ARCHIE-3 hasn't done anything that rises to the level of concern that would result in ARCHIE-7 telling anyone.

Again, however, you have two issues. Either he is using a 300 year old ID to access the system, which by even the most minimal of security standards of today should have aged off the system ages ago, OR, he is using a backdoor which Archie 7 should be able to detect since the computer is aware of the communication. So either Archie 3 should not be able to access it, or Archie 7 should be flagging it as a non-standard access, for someone to look into further.

Now, I have a hard time believing that their security would be so lax to allow for either one. After all, if someone can hack your system, they can shut down your life support. I would imagine that this would be a pretty big problem in space. But I am hooked on oxygen, so maybe that is just my bias.

You're simply giving too much credit to the idea that it must be obvious and must follow only the paths you think would have to be followed even when alternatives that are just as valid are given. It's not binary with an either/or situation as you put it. The cases of IT people doing dumb things that you'd go 'I can't believe he did that when that's so basic' are numerous, yet you're so convinced that it's impossible for them to have people doing stupid things like putting a post-it on his terminal with his access codes like many do today?

Since ARCHIE-3 can access the satellite and use it for its own purposes using 300 year old access codes then it follows that in spite of your insistence on the infallibility of IT personnel the CAN republic has access codes built into its system that have been part of the basic operating system and perhaps overlooked in subsequent upgrades over the centuries. Access codes that haven't expired and have become a back door into things centuries later after people have forgotten that they exist. Something quite understandable when you're talking something with such massive complexity no human programmer could possibly review it all. It's also pretty clear in the material on ARCHIE-7 that even with access codes its core programming won't let you shut off the oxygen and they do have back-up systems if they have to take ARCHIE-7 offline even if manual control is far more inefficient.

[Killer Cyborg]

MiO 62
Unlike Archie Three, the ARCHIE Seven intelligence is a complete artificial intelligence, devoid of emotion, but is capable of analyzing data in a subjective way and can act on subjective logic: hunches and speculation.

SB1 13
The machine entity, Archie, was created as a neural intelligence, although he has mutated into something much more than a mere machine.

MiO 62
ARCHIE Seven is a more sophisticated version of Archie Three...


Premise 1: Archie Three was created as a Neural Intelligence.
Premise 2: Archie Seven is a more sophisticated version of Archie Three.
Conclusion: Archie Seven is a Neural Intelligence.

SB1 14
[Neural Intelligences] can learn new skills, extrapolate on existing skills, modify their behavior, adapt to their environment, make judgments, have an alignment, speculate, theorize and think outside the box. Many believe NIs can eventually develop a truly distinct personality, just like a person, and even develop a soul.

Such robots have the capacity to make conclusions on minimal data, act on hunches, formulate plans and execute them.

[strtkwr]

No, I am not saying IT personnel are infallible. What I am saying is that the string of incompetence stretches the credibility of the story. It's not like he picked up the password from a sticky note, since the preverbal desk is on the moon.

After all, even the IT guys at my work can tell if there is an access point from a non-approved IP address (and when my computer is in communication with a restricted IP address). So the "super-sophisticated" Archie 7 is dumber than the code that my work uses here in the 21st century?

[Nightmask]

No, I am not saying IT personnel are infallible. What I am saying is that the string of incompetence stretches the credibility of the story. It's not like he picked up the password from a sticky note, since the preverbal desk is on the moon.

After all, even the IT guys at my work can tell if there is an access point from a non-approved IP address (and when my computer is in communication with a restricted IP address). So the "super-sophisticated" Archie 7 is dumber than the code that my work uses here in the 21st century?

I think you're missing some key factors here, with the most critical being the complete breakdown of rational thought in the space community when the Cataclysm occurred and massive suicidal behavior that resulted. By the time anyone was putting things back together and trying to survive it's completely understandable (especially with the failure of ARCHIE-4) that things would go missed. Then they just kept perpetuating things as the centuries went along. The orbital community is still using a lot of stuff that was created in the Golden Age (like the grisly fact that many use 'hand-me-down' bionics and cybernetics that have been used and serviced across all that time).

Meanwhile we're talking a satellite that's not even a direct extension of the ARCHIE-7 computer network, it's a remote system it logs into along with others to access routine information. ARCHIE-7 looks, sees a valid code, makes note that it's an old but still valid code and watches to see if anything that happens is from its perspective threatening to the moon colony sees no threat and so doesn't flag it as a concern.

[Nightmask]

Again no ARCHIE-7 does NOT have self-awareness, and for the last time actually read the page in its entirety and look at both the actual language as well as the context. The book goes to obvious lengths to make it clear that ARCHIE-7 is not sentient and not self-aware and is just a machine. The text even says that ARCHIE-7 is just a machine. The reference to ARCHIE-7 as the brain of the Moon colony is an analogy and not meant to be taken literally, the same with regards to its knowing what's going on to a degree throughout the station. A robot in a factory has to be aware of those things related to its function in order to do its job, that doesn't make it self-aware. You're confusing things thinking because a human is aware of its environment that anything that's aware is sentient and self-aware and that's not true.

Self-awareness and being "alive" not quite the same thing, a concept which is fairly well understood in computer science and efforts to develop real artificial intelligences.

ARCHIE-7 exhibits all the hallmarks of being self-aware:

1) It knows that it exists
2) It can differentiate between the humans of the CAN Republic and other humans, as well as between itself and other technological systems
3) It can speculate and act on "hunches"
4) It can develop strategies for dealing with enemies
5) It can take action independently of human direction based on perceived needs

That makes it self-aware. It just does not make it a "person" or "alive" as humans define the concept. Yet, it is still described as "a more sophisticated version of ARCHIE-3". That would seem contradictory. But it need not be:

1) It is designated as being a part of the same series of supercomputers, rather than a different series
2) It uses the same physical hardware - deliberately designed to mimic a human brain, but...
3) It controls a much larger facility and interfaces with a much larger human population
4) It does not directly control the humans, as ARCHIE-3 does all of his robots. Thus it must be capable of coping with human individuality without breaking down
5) It also must deal off-site CAN resources (such as the satellites)

ARCHIE-7 isn't self-aware, it does not know that it exists, it doesn't speculate or act on hunches, and especially on that first point you aren't going to find those computer programmers agreeing with you that while ARCHIE-7 is said to exhibit some traits of life that it isn't proof it's alive or self-aware. The material regarding ARCHIE-7 says that it isn't self-aware, that it is just a machine, so no matter how much you insist it has to be the books make it clear that while you may play that in your games Palladium's position is diametrically opposed to yours and holds that ARCHIE-7 is just a really good machine and not self-aware which ought to be evident.

In practical terms, it very likely has greater processing power and system resources than ARCHIE-3 does. However, it was probably not programmed psionically, and thus did not pick up the fragments of personality that created ARCHIE-3's more developed, if considerably less stable, personality. It has also never needed to operate without human input, and thus never needed to develop those personality traits. ARCHIE-3 was left alone after the Great Cataclysm. Decades of solitary thought without any functions to fulfill separated his periods of activity. So he would naturally develop along different lines than ARCHIE-7, which is also younger than he is.

Thus ARCHIE-7 does not need to develop the personality traits that ARCHIE-3 has. However, given the simple fact that it is part of the same series of computers suggests that it could do so.

ARCHIE-7 can't develop a personality, that requires self-awareness which it doesn't have. ARCHIE-7 is also radically different in design from ARCHIE-3 even if it's numbered higher in the series it's made clear in the books that while ARCHIE-3 is a neural intelligence ARCHIE-7 isn't and is just a machine.

ARCHIE-3's personality problems has nothing to do with 'personality fragments' from the interface programming, like any other living thing it suffered a horrible shock to its awareness it was never prepared for like the rest of humanity wasn't (and even Immortals who'd lived for millenia prior to the Cataclysm were traumatized by it). It tried to help things out and found itself helpless to save people that depended on it which hurt it even more leading to its start of darkness.

One thing it unquestionably has is the self-awareness to recognize that it is not the same system as ARCHIE-3. Otherwise it would not hesitate to interface with him. It is aware that ARCHIE-3 is a different entity, and one that is located on Earth, which is under quarantine. However, it does not need to react (yet) because ARCHIE-3 has taken no actions that would reveal the existence of the CAN Republic. If ARCHIE-3 were to do so then it most definitely would react.

You need to stop misusing self-awareness like that. ARCHIE-7 has no awareness of self, it's knowledge of the existence of ARCHIE-3 is just a fact in its database. It's just a case of ones and zeroes with ARCHIE-7, ARCHIE-3 hasn't turned any bits that require it to notify anyone or do anything about ARCHIE-3 accessing that satellite. If ARCHIE-7 were self-aware it would be able to form independent thoughts and act in ways against its programming but it can't, it's just a machine.

The main question would be how much it has told the human leaders of the CAN Republic. Simple logic would be that it would tell them about the access, even if it were otherwise a very a dumb machine, which it is not. Earth is under quarantine and an information blackout. CAN wants information from Earth but does not want information about the space colonies going back down. ARCHIE-7 knows enough not to reveal itself to ARCHIE-3 for that reason. If it were not self-aware it would simply consider the other ARCHIE to be a part of the same network. They are both Cyberworks supercomputers after all. But clearly it does not.

No, that's not the main question. That question assumes something that's not evident, namely that ARCHIE-7 must have said something. Until an actual book says 'And ARCHIE-3's use of the satellite finally resulted in ARCHIE-7 notifying the CAN Republic leaders about it' then based on what's written it has not contacted them over it, BECAUSE it's a dumb machine. It lacks the real intelligence necessary to realize that ARCHIE-3's use of those old codes is something it ought to be informing its creators over.

My original speculation is thus still unresolved. ARCHIE-7 knows about ARCHIE-3 using its satellite as a communications relay. The question is what it is doing about it. It hasn't locked ARCHIE-3 out, nor done anything that would reveal itself to him. But modern data systems (even now) do not function as simple repeaters. That whole concept is decades old. And even if ARCHIE-7 lacked the curiosity to wonder about what is being sent through the satellite, which is unlikely because one of it's functions is threat assessment, the humans of the CAN Republic would definitely want to know what is being sent through the satellite.

Plus, both they, and ARCHIE-7, would likely want to close the 300 year-old security hole in their satellites operating systems, if only to keep ARCHIE-3 from accessing any of their other satellites. Just because their ancestors built him does not mean that they would see him as anything other than a security breach.

ARCHIE-7 doesn't see it as a security hole, a point you keep ignoring given it derails your insistence the system has to run contrary to how it's actually portrayed. It hasn't said anything because it doesn't realize from its simple machine logic that there is something to say to anyone about it. You're ascribing to it too much human intelligence and reasoning ability for it to tell anyone about ARCHIE-3's activities. It's programmed to not let anyone on Earth know about things in space, and to respond to valid access codes (something it's implied even ARCHIE-3 is possibly vulnerable to). Lacking actual awareness and sentience it fails to notify its superiors about the old codes because that's not something included in its range of programmed response. Nobody planned for something like that occurring and so the system breaks down.

[wyrmraker]

I'm going to have to both agree and disagree with these points. First, ARCHIE-7 in not a self-aware AI, this is a fact. Therefore certain amounts of extrapolation are beyond it.
However, any communication from Earth would automatically be flagged as important. It could be anything from NEMA descendants to some idiot who found an old installation, but the event would still be flagged as a transmission from Earth, given the lockdown. Such a flagged event would immediately pop up for the technicians, and possibly be brought up before CAN Republic's ruling group.

On a different note, can someone please tell me precisely which books and pages to find the references to ARCHIE-1? I'm just not finding the ones that some of the guys here have mentions.

[Nightmask]

I'm going to have to both agree and disagree with these points. First, ARCHIE-7 in not a self-aware AI, this is a fact. Therefore certain amounts of extrapolation are beyond it.
However, any communication from Earth would automatically be flagged as important. It could be anything from NEMA descendants to some idiot who found an old installation, but the event would still be flagged as a transmission from Earth, given the lockdown. Such a flagged event would immediately pop up for the technicians, and possibly be brought up before CAN Republic's ruling group.

The CAN republic depends a bit too much on ARCHIE-7, and technically ARCHIE-3 hasn't communicated with it just a lone Moon satellite. It likely doesn't notify them of anything that doesn't present a security risk and so far ARCHIE-3's not done anything to threaten security. Not like it's up to it to speculate, it's receiving valid albeit old codes that it has no reason to really think are odd to receive. After all from its perspective only moon people would have valid codes so maybe it's just some survivors from a crashed ship or spy mission it didn't know about using the satellite. Without curiosity and just a computer's outlook on things it doesn't reach the point that it would give anyone any idea someone on earth is using the satellite since it isn't interfering with the satellite's functions.

EDIT:

Really, you're giving them more credit than they're due. Just this year a high profile cyber-security company got hacked in a really humiliating fashion, so as much as there's the insistence on how such a hole is stupid and ought to be impossible that's not reality. Reality is things happen, holes get left or overlooked even by the paranoid and just because the CAN republic is paranoid about Earth and security doesn't equate to perfection and the paranoid can have blind spots that leave them vulnerable.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Super-telemechanics. A unique ability of Archie 3 to communicate with machines he created. Not sure that would apply here.

It would seem if he had such, that passwords and what not aren't really going to slow him down. If he can just think his way past them.

[Pepsi Jedi]

It could be alot more simple than some people are getting into here.

Archie 7 could simply see Archie 3 as another of it's kind. And not want to sever the link that it has with 3. 7 can live vicariously and watch 3's actions through the link. It knows that 3 is a brother of sorts and if he 'Tells' on 3, the humans will make him sever and lock 3 out. He doesn't want to leave 3 out in the cold fending for himself.

Being the "more advanced model" he might even feel protective of poor 3. (though with lack of emotion this would have to be programed in. Not innate)
Conversely there might be a simple line of code in 7's programing. "help all your older brothers up to the point where it harms yourself" 3's use of the satellites doesn't hurt 7 or the space groups so he leaves it alone.

As for the 'why haven't the humans found and closed the door', part. It's likely that they don't think anyone has the keys or knows the way to even get to thedoor, so they don't look to know the door exists, and therefore it's not closed and locked. A huge case of 'out of sight out of mind" With 7 taking care of so many functions... they probably don't wanna fuss with it. if they do they might kill/hurt 7 and thusly hurt/kill themselves. So unless he malfunctions they let him run.

They do go out o f their way to say 7 doesn't have emotion. 3 does. So 7 is hobbled that way. Granted emotions can hobble you too, but 7 is 'acting' like a machine, sentient perhaps but with out emotion it's like the worst 'image' of Vulcans. (( Yes I know Vulcan's have emotion. I'm referencing what the 'Image" of Vulcans are))

So thought, and self awareness with No emotion, it comes across as robotic. And thusly falls back to how it's programed, or what it's told, to react to things.

To me this tells me that there's rules in 7. Part of his 'core programing' so to say that aren't affected by his evolution. And one of those rules is likely the above or some variation of it. "Help other Archie intelligences as long as you can verify that they ARE Archie intelligences and aiding them does not put your self in danger or go counter indicative to primary functions." Something like that.

Archie 3 is another Archie even if he's a lesser model (( in 7's optics)) So, as long as it costs him(7) nothing, he helps 3. 7 doesn't talk to 3, because, there's little he can do for 3 right now, and divulging his existence to 3 would put 7 in danger. Not that he'd think 3 would come get him, but if the dangers of earth knew the space groups where up there they might try harder to get off planet and 7 knows Earth is under quarantine. If 3 tries to take over or come into space, chances are that aid would be re-evaulated. His 'Friend or foe" and threat annalisis programs would have to refactor the equation.

Would 7 see 3 as a brother and welcome him with open arms?
Has 7 been monitoring CLOSELY and know that 3 is a bit nuts, but that nuts doesn't threaten the space groups? If so, clearly 3 would be a threat , IF he expanded heavenly. But NOT till then. After all Archie can be as MUAHAHA as he wants down on earth. Doesn't hurt the space communities at alll. Earth is "under glass" so to say.

Conversely 3 may very well know about 7, but see 7 the exact same way 7 sees 3. "It's up there, it's not hurting me, it's content to stay up there, so frak him." sort of thing. 3 is smart enough and AWARE enough to be able to see the fingerprints of 7, and is in the unique position to know what those fingerprints intell.


The way I see it is, when rifts first came out, they made space off limits to help contain the planet. Space information came much later and they had to explain why the groups didn't link up. So this is sort of wedged in there.

They've had chances to update the material and have the two meet for years but haven't. This is a willful thing on Palladium's side. In short. They've painted them selves into a corner on it and are choosing not to address it. With SOO much yet to be reveiled in Rifts, they canput out another 30 books and not have to touch it. So... they don't.

[Killer Cyborg]

The material regarding ARCHIE-7 says that it isn't self-aware

Quote the exact passage that says that, because I'm not finding it.