Thats fair enough. If your GM allows it, so be it. I never would though. Just like modern aircraft/ships/cars/trucks. I can't hack into the GPS system of a big rig and control the steering. I can't get into the communication frequency of a V-22, and tell it it to go from helicopter flight to airplane flight. Those systems are just not connected. In my game if someone did get into he "radio" comms of TIEs, they could do nothing to the craft, as the comm system is not tied to the thrusters, or blasters. Now some of the brand new modern cars do have the wifi capability. One could hack into that, but still not control the steering, but may be able to control the engine, the radio, the GPS, but nothing that has to have a human input, brakes, steering, acceleration. Cruise control is under debate right now. I can't see military craft having this capability, and in my games TIES definitely do not. They are to cheap to put that stuff in there.

That's fair, it just seems like you're basically relegating the slicer to not be able to do his signature thing in combat based on some need for real-world verisimilitude. I think they put that option in the book just so the brainy people could do something other than shoot the turrets or stand around making repairs as needed.

Isn't the slicing during vehicle combat in the RAW just a few black dice here and there? I am AFB at the moment.

I would think that it would best represent radar jamming, false silhouettes, communication issues and other such items.

No I put that in there because there has to be a signal that can be hacked that has to lead to something you want to to control. It has to be a complete circuit. Can you hack into my PC fight now? sure. Could you turn off my monitor or mess with the tint/color/brightness of it? No the PC and the monitor, while connected don't have that connection. You could possibly turn off my video card.

Although RAW calls it "Slice enemy systems" here is the narrative description of it:

"The crew member uses powerful shipboard computers to attempt to disrupt the systems of an enemy vehicle. If successful, he reduces the defense of one zone on the target vehicle for one round per success. A Triumph may be spent to disable a weapon system for one round, and two Advantage may be spent to inflict one system strain on the target vehicle."

ECRB P 237.

Nothing here says that the player is inside the enemy craft systems. It almost reads more akin to "jamming" the shields, causing an overload from an external source, the ships computers sending out an EMP-type pulse. on the big Triumph, it may overload the weapons sensors. and may cause a touch of physical damage to the hull in the form of System Strain, akin to a blown fuse or something.

So basically what your GM is doing is a house rule, not following the ECRB RAW.

No where have I seen in the ECRB, ACRB and FBeta, where it says that a slicer can hack into an enemy craft and control any parts of it. If this were the case IG-88 and Lobot would be the supreme rulers of the galaxy. The Death Star would not need TIEs, it would have used slicers to shut down the X-wings.

If you did hack into an enemies comm signal, the only thing you can do is talk to them, or listen to them. Which that is awesome in its own right.

If that is how your GM wants to run it, great. It is just not by the book, so you can't tell me that I am not letting my slicer do his "signature" thing in combat, when that is the furthest from the truth.

Um, I didn't say that my GM let me do that kind of stuff (basically making you a Shaodwrun rigger), so I have no idea where you're getting that I'm even implying that sort of thing should be possible.

At the same time I don't know how it'd make sense that you can "jam their shields" or bring down weapons without having some kind of wireless connection to whatever mechanical parts control their shields and weapons, though. If you can shut down a weapon, you're in their systems *somehow.* That's well beyond the scope of signal jamming.

The closest thing my character has developed to that is a remote speeder bike opperated by a droid brain.

Fumimentally, while there is a general sort of internet type interphase avalible, most data is located on secure systems and the data that is publicly avalible is generally doctored by the locations administrators or by the empire itself to reflect their agenda.

For example, on Jewel of Yavin I was able to download a map of cloud city onto my data pad, but it wouldn't tell me where the wind tunnels are; the layout of the Musieum itself or any highly detailed information about how the station was run. It was a closed system designed to list the locations and the vast majority of legal streets, so it wouldn't tell me about those shady people that hang out between decks. That I had to find out through hard research.

Another time was when I was trying to get some dirt on the ISB that I had to hack into a holonet relay. This wasn't something I could do remotely, but by being flown out to one of said relays along the route I was interested, going there would then allow me to gather information from either origin points about certain imperial/cival applications and allow me to download details transmitted between those two points, but it wasn't possible to a remote hack on a ISB headquarters on planet as it isn't a open system; it was only a reciever and thus I could only be limited to sending false messages to certain addresses. To actually gain access to what is within those HQ's, I would have to be within that closed system.

As for hacking fighters; I don't see it so much as hacking the fighters themselves; but altering the information that said fighters would recieve on the craft they were chasing. Thus why you couldn't do anything directly to a T-fighter, but you could change your profile to mimic a imperial ship, or to be in a different location then you actually are. Making it more difficult by decieving the sensors, rather then directly tampering with the craft

e.g. on a trumph, you breifly mask your frequency with that of another T-fighter, causing the pilot's weapon systems to jam from "friendly fire" counteraction protocalls being engaged.

Sorry for my ranting...

So after the Empire came into power it pretty much shut down the Holonet for the public. The Holonet is not just the "internet", it is faster-than-light means of information sharing. It actually uses Hypersapce to transmit data so there is virtually no time lag in communications. Many worlds will have the "internet" and even some wifi capable areas, but banks, major commerce centers and military/government buildings will not be on that wifi network.

Except if you break in and insert a dataspike like they did in Rebels after the Empire existed. =)

Locked down does not mean wireless went away. It means it is harder. They have had long range communications with Fulcrum too.

While trying to reconcile Original Trilogy and 1/2/3 is next to impossible without making up for plot holes and outright mistakes. You can totally ignore it and do whatever you want technology wise (I am looking at you Star Trek Enterprise).

I almost feel this disagreement is "old trilogy versus new trilogy" rather than what is possible in FFG SWRPG versus what isnt.

The d20 RCR Rebellion Era Sourcebook, while being 14 years old, is pretty specific about how the Holonet was used freely before and during the Clone Wars, and was also how personal communications were made. Obi-Wan's transmissions were limited in range because his transmitter was damaged and he couldn't access the holonet. Padme's ship, like holo-transmitting Jedi Council members, had a connection to the Holonet, and could this transmit at virtually no time lag.

The Empire, however, shut down all use of the Holonet outside of the Core and restricted military applications. The transceivers and relays were scrapped all over. Wireless tech didn't go away, and nearly in-system communication is still viable (Tatooine to Geonosis), but most systems were designed to interface with the Holonet, not necessarily other devices.

Think of it as your cell phone connection to other things. You can send a text message or video to someone in real time. But only if you have a connection to the cell phone tower, which is now, in Star Wars, nonexistent or military use only. Radio exists, but you can only send and receive, not control a device. Blue tooth is still a thing, but you can only connect to other blue tooth devices at a short range, and not many devices are set up for blue tooth.

Long-range communication can't piggy-back on the Holonet without serious slicing in the Original Trilogy time period, and most devices like your datapad and the local library, traffic control, etc, aren't configured for wireless access. I say wireless access because there is a big difference between sending information (a radio or text message) and wireless access (I can change something via Google docs or log into a computer remotely). Sending is all fine and dandy except across huge distances, but slicing requires access, permissions, etc, not just the ability to broadcast and receive data like a radio.

This is why wireless exists, but due to the way devices are set up in Star Wars, wireless slicing is very hard if possible at all. The dataspike that everyone is so excited about allows access via wireless, rather than just broadcast / receive.

As for hacking fighters; I don't see it so much as hacking the fighters themselves; but altering the information that said fighters would recieve on the craft they were chasing. Thus why you couldn't do anything directly to a T-fighter, but you could change your profile to mimic a imperial ship, or to be in a different location then you actually are. Making it more difficult by decieving the sensors, rather then directly tampering with the craft

e.g. on a trumph, you breifly mask your frequency with that of another T-fighter, causing the pilot's weapon systems to jam from "friendly fire" counteraction protocalls being engaged.

These are some really cool ideas.

No where have I seen in the ECRB, ACRB and FBeta, where it says that a slicer can hack into an enemy craft and control any parts of it. If this were the case IG-88 and Lobot would be the supreme rulers of the galaxy. The Death Star would not need TIEs, it would have used slicers to shut down the X-wings.

If you did hack into an enemies comm signal, the only thing you can do is talk to them, or listen to them. Which that is awesome in its own right.

If that is how your GM wants to run it, great. It is just not by the book, so you can't tell me that I am not letting my slicer do his "signature" thing in combat, when that is the furthest from the truth.

Um, I didn't say that my GM let me do that kind of stuff (basically making you a Shaodwrun rigger), so I have no idea where you're getting that I'm even implying that sort of thing should be possible.

At the same time I don't know how it'd make sense that you can "jam their shields" or bring down weapons without having some kind of wireless connection to whatever mechanical parts control their shields and weapons, though. If you can shut down a weapon, you're in their systems *somehow.* That's well beyond the scope of signal jamming.

You didn't pull the line for your quote where I mentioned I had a past player argue with me for an hour about how he can hack into a TIE Fighter and be the remote pilot. So the quote you pulled was not about you, it was in reference to the line above it.

When my player does it, i just don't really get into the hows and whys of it. There is no way a comm signal can travel around the ship to go interfere with the weapons or any other part of the ship as they are not connected in the right ways to do that. If that is how you and your GM explain it so be it.

I read the description of what the book says as more a "static-charge" or something similar to jamming that "disrupts" the shields monetarily or can blind the targeting sensor, making it have to re-calibrate for a round. In the description from the book, it says nothing about having a connection between the ships. You made it sound like while you couldn't blow up a ship, you could more to it than just get rid of a setback die to defense.

Once again, the book is very vague on how this happens. This book is great at being vague. The term Slice is only used in the "name" of the additional action, but the description of the action does not read that way. The book uses the term disrupt, not shut down for a reason. I think it would have been better to call it "Disrupt enemy systems"

In what part of that episode did you see the crew transmit video? We only heard audio and saw them sitting around a radio transmitter all grouped together.

Even so, video can be done with analog signals. While you have a point about vehicles being operated remotely, that does not imply that they can be sliced. It may simply be a matter of verbal instructions to a computer that can handle it. I have yet to see a modern drone like remote setup in any star wars media.

You are making a presumption about their style of technology based from our modern ways of doing things. While it makes sense, it is not the only way of looking at it. That is my point. Your universe will use what makes sense to you and your players. Nothing canon proves otherwise.

Hrmm Maybe I misremembered the slight part about video, in that scene, but my other examples of wireless video were valid (aka Obi-Wan in episode 2) and ... well the Jedi Council Chamber.. Darth Sidious transmitting to Darth Maul and the Trade Federation and Count Dooku. Is your head buried is sand far enough yet?

Wireless Video exists in Star Wars (regardless if 1 of my many examples was wrong). Wireless transmission of voice (also data unless you assume sound transmitted through the Force or something).

Should slicing be done wirelessly? Oh someone already pointed out Ship-to-ship hacking is RAW. I am guessing they don't shoot a cable out to the other ship and hope it finds an open port while they are travelling different speeds (Like a bad episode of /Scorpion).

I am convinced you have a single solitary view of Star Wars, anyone disagreeing with that rigid view is the Devil and wrong.

Yes there is wireless video. that is still not wireless slicing. It is like TV. Just because you can receive video or holo information. Does not mean you can slice through wireless. The stuff they talk about in slicing starship stuff is more the realm of electronic warfare and fooling the enemies sensors.

Thats fair enough. If your GM allows it, so be it. I never would though. Just like modern aircraft/ships/cars/trucks. I can't hack into the GPS system of a big rig and control the steering. I can't get into the communication frequency of a V-22, and tell it it to go from helicopter flight to airplane flight. Those systems are just not connected. In my game if someone did get into he "radio" comms of TIEs, they could do nothing to the craft, as the comm system is not tied to the thrusters, or blasters. Now some of the brand new modern cars do have the wifi capability. One could hack into that, but still not control the steering, but may be able to control the engine, the radio, the GPS, but nothing that has to have a human input, brakes, steering, acceleration. Cruise control is under debate right now. I can't see military craft having this capability, and in my games TIES definitely do not. They are to cheap to put that stuff in there.

That's fair, it just seems like you're basically relegating the slicer to not be able to do his signature thing in combat based on some need for real-world verisimilitude. I think they put that option in the book just so the brainy people could do something other than shoot the turrets or stand around making repairs as needed.

There is a pretty big difference between allowing slicers to hit a big red I win button, because I just took over a squad of TIE Fighters and am now remote controlling them like I'm playing Super Mario Crash Cart and not letting them do what they do in combat. There are plenty of things they can do, but remote controling vehicles and space ships by slicing into them is not one of them.

Hello

this is a great discussion. After have read all of your arguments i have come up with my own house rules:

Hacking/Slicing Rules

Remote access

Remote access or wireless entry is possible in some locations and some systems. Mostly open public system. Government and military systems are shielded and decrypt. And will most likely require someone physically be at the location / server / terminal itself.

Unless someone have already installed a dataspike into the terminal already. If so it may be used as a wireless router.

It is possible to use powerful shipboard computers to attempt to disrupt the system of an enemy vehicle/ship from distance. ( EOTE core book, page 237 ) If successful this may happen:

- Reduce the defense of one zone on the target vehicle/ship for one round pr success.

- A triumph may be spent to disable a weapon system for one round.

- Two advantage may be spent to inflict one system strain to enemy vehicle/ship.

Access to CPU

In most cases players have to physically be at the CPU/terminal he want to hack/slice. If it is a locked terminal you have to hack through the password first. This require a skill check. GM sets diff.

Some times you need to get a code cylinder off an officer to gain entry to a locked system. This is usually a pen like thing some imperial officers have in their breast pocket. A slicing kit likely has an S-comp tool that allows you to bypass the code cylinder request.

In some cases access may be blocked by parts/steel ( Cased inn). If so , they have to first do a mechanic skill check to gain access. GM sets diff. Before any hacking may be done.

Avoid detection

Once you managed to enter the enemy system there is a chance for detection. Most CPU have an active artificial security system. It monitors everything that is going on. If it detect anything suspicious it may alert a humanoid operator. In case of detecting an intrusion it will activate security systems. Players can be locked out from their connection or extra blast doors will close around the door they are trying to open. Therefore a skill check have to be maid to avoid detection and don’t leave any trail of your entry. GM sets diff.

Stealing info or control the CPU

After the players have gained entry unnoticed they may try to do what they intended. It is possible that players may not do everything they wanted to do from one terminal. You may have to access many terminal on several different places. Example on this is:

- You can locate the prisoners but can not release them from here.

- You locate where the force field is. But you cant deactivate it from here.

GM sets the difficulty for finding the info/ or manipulate what you want.

Hello

this is a great discussion. After have read all of your arguments i have come up with my own house rules:

Hacking/Slicing Rules

Remote access

Remote access or wireless entry is possible in some locations and some systems. Mostly open public system. Government and military systems are shielded and decrypt. And will most likely require someone physically be at the location / server / terminal itself.

Unless someone have already installed a dataspike into the terminal already. If so it may be used as a wireless router.

It is possible to use powerful shipboard computers to attempt to disrupt the system of an enemy vehicle/ship from distance. ( EOTE core book, page 237 ) If successful this may happen:

- Reduce the defense of one zone on the target vehicle/ship for one round pr success.

- A triumph may be spent to disable a weapon system for one round.

- Two advantage may be spent to inflict one system strain to enemy vehicle/ship.

Access to CPU

In most cases players have to physically be at the CPU/terminal he want to hack/slice. If it is a locked terminal you have to hack through the password first. This require a skill check. GM sets diff.

In some cases access may be blocked by parts/steel ( Cased inn). If so , they have to first do a mechanic skill check to gain access. GM sets diff. Before any hacking may be done.

Avoid detection

Once you managed to enter the enemy system there is a chance for detection. Most CPU have an active artificial security system. It monitors everything that is going on. If it detect anything suspicious it may alert a humanoid operator. In case of detecting an intrusion it will activate security systems. Players can be locked out from their connection or extra blast doors will close around the door they are trying to open. Therefore a skill check have to be maid to avoid detection and don’t leave any trail of your entry. GM sets diff.

Stealing info or control the CPU

After the players have gained entry unnoticed they may try to do what they intended. It is possible that players may not do everything they wanted to do from one terminal. You may have to access many terminal on several different places. Example on this is:

- You can locate the prisoners but can not release them from here.

- You locate where the force field is. But you cant deactivate it from here.

GM sets the difficulty for finding the info/ or manipulate what you want.

Code cylinders. Some times you need to get a code cylinder off of an officer. For those who don't know. they are the pen like things some imperial officers have in their breast pockets. A slicing kit likely has an S-Comp tool that allows you to try and bypass the code cylinder request. Should add some info on that

another piece of RAW to take into account is from Sunos of Fortune, the Remote Activation Controller (and i believe there is a similar device in another book thats more expensive and more advanced, i just can't remember which book).

in the text of that book it describes different levels of control depending on the complexity of the system. basic models allow for remote start, more advanced work from further away, even more advanced allow activation of the auto-pilot to direct the ship to you. finally there is the most expensive and complex systems, which use SLAVE CIRCUITS to allow Daunting piloting checks to remote fly the craft.

From this i would say we defiantly have advanced long range wireless data systems in FFG's vision of SW.

But any old ship can't simply be flown remotely, unless it has already got the remote slave circuits installed.

Now if i was playing a slicer, and i felt the cinematic need to take control of an enemy ship, then i would hope my gm you say "yes, you can try, but" (because he is not a d**k)

Then i would roll a suitably hard check, probably upgraded, flip a destiny point, and spend the triumph i roll on a successful check to narrate that in actual fact this particular NPC had already installed the required slave circuits. If i was lucky enough to roll 2 triumphs i would probably activate the skilled slicer talent as well.

now next turn i am probably going to have to use every Defensive slicing talent, or my improved defensive slicing talent to maintain control of the craft.

What would i actually do when i had control of the ship? Vent it to space! No use destroying a perfectly good ship.

Real world case in point. In the Air Force all our offices had the coordless handsets back in the early 2000's. Around 2004 we ALL had to switch back to corded handsets due to security issues. Even in the Oval Office, all the phones there are still corded. We do have the SIPERNET, which a secure internet that is both wired and wireless in some places, and to get in that system, that is where cross the line of "real world" hacking and "fantasy" hacking. In the real world an operation like the one done on Sony could takes months of work by a dozen people to pull off, not some dude sitting on in starbucks with an iPad making a RPPP check. You go dumpster diving, infiltrating the offices as "cleaners" to lift up keyboards looking for passwords, taking photos of the cubicles, identifying the people in the photos, cars, license plate numbers to use as passwords. The Sony op was able to happen because someone got a system admin's password. It was not "broken" or "cracked" they either stole it, or he sold it to them.

On a side note, you know why they use the DNS on SIPRnet, right? And why they use real IP address space, as issued by the NIC, right?

That was a long and hairy conversation that I had with the SIPRnet project manager, back when I was the DISA.MIL Technical POC, and right after I had helped get the ASSIST.mil folks up and running with their new domain.

In the end, the reason I gave that held the most weight with her was the fact that NSA was supposedly working on this “Multi-Level Secure Gateway” that was supposed to connect SIPRnet to the NIPRnet and the rest of the Internet at some point in time in the distant future, and it would be simply impossible to make that connection happen if they didn’t use the same technologies on the classified side as we were using on the unclassified side.

You’re welcome.

Now, back to Star Wars.

Thats fair enough. If your GM allows it, so be it. I never would though. Just like modern aircraft/ships/cars/trucks. I can't hack into the GPS system of a big rig and control the steering.

No, but GPS signals can be spoofed, so that you can fool the automated guidance systems into thinking that they are somewhere else and that they should make a “course correction” to compensate.

And the GPS satellite system has ground control stations that are used to monitor and maintain the satellite network — so, if you could break into them, or somehow pretend to be one of them, then you could potentially actually control the fleet.

If there’s a human at the wheel of the vehicle in question, maybe they notice and ignore the bogus data, or maybe they blindly follow the instructions from the magic box and just sail right off the bridge.

People are dumb enough to follow bogus driving directions from a computer and get themselves killed, even if there isn’t any hacking involved (so far as we know).

I can't get into the communication frequency of a V-22, and tell it it to go from helicopter flight to airplane flight. Those systems are just not connected. In my game if someone did get into he "radio" comms of TIEs, they could do nothing to the craft, as the comm system is not tied to the thrusters, or blasters. Now some of the brand new modern cars do have the wifi capability. One could hack into that, but still not control the steering, but may be able to control the engine, the radio, the GPS, but nothing that has to have a human input, brakes, steering, acceleration. Cruise control is under debate right now.

A lot depends on how the Vehicle Area Network was set up when the system was implemented. There may well be systems that are supposed to be separate from each other, but in fact they are not.

I can't see military craft having this capability, and in my games TIES definitely do not. They are to cheap to put that stuff in there.

Modern car manufacturers are also known for being exceedingly cheap, and sometimes they do stupid stuff like make some systems do too many things which should be kept separate from each other.

And then there’s always the repair technicians — what if an aspiring Rigger were to “upgrade” the systems? What if he rolled a Despair, and his GM didn’t tell him what that meant at the time, but decided to save that failure for later?

In principle, I agree that military systems would be built in such a way as to keep these kinds of things separate.

But a Triumph on an Impossible roll could mean that you’ve stumbled a time-sensitive bug in the systems, and when they’ve been online for too long, their guidance system starts going haywire in predictable ways — remember the Patriot Point Defense systems that were supposed to protect Israel during the Gulf War?

Well, they went and made it canon on Monday night on Rebels. Seems that AT-STs on Lothal have access to an imperial data net.

@Bradknowles. I agree with you totally, but you are no longer talking about "Slice Enemy Systems" from the ECRB.

"The crew member uses powerful shipboard computers to attempt to disrupt the systems of an enemy vehicle. If successful, he reduces the defense of one zone on the target vehicle for one round per success. A Triumph may be spent to disable a weapon system for one round, and two Advantage may be spent to inflict one system strain on the target vehicle."

ECRB P 237.

Things like you are talking about would be great Encounters separate from just Starship combat. Perhaps the group did an Encounter where they did go to a relay station and tampered with it, then later on, during an escape got into starship combat and could now do stuff like mess the guidance system.

I once had a past player tell me he was going to slice into an enemy ship and vent it to open space sucking out/killing everyone on board. When I told him that that action could not be done with the what they had, he became pretty argumentative about it. He only wanted to read the title "slice enemy systems", not the information provided in the details. He said that was only suggestions. If I would have allowed that, then my game would have become very dark and depressing very quickly. I also warned that whatever they can do, the NPC's can do to them. How would they feel if I did that to them.

Well yes an AT-ST would have access to the imperial datanet. Its not unlike how a police cruiser has access to dmv records and police database. You are talking about breaking into a well armed vehicle full of storm troopers equipped with weapons that will vaporize player characters. Good luck:)

AM i the only one who wants to scream when they just open vehicles in Rebels? Is nobody locking their bloody doors anymore? With all that shooting and jumping around i'd seal my doors/Hatches immediately.

Think of it like modern cars where just walking up with the keys in your pocket unlock the doors and allow you to start the car by pushing a button. You walk away and the ship closes up and locks maybe. You approach and it opens for you.

AM i the only one who wants to scream when they just open vehicles in Rebels? Is nobody locking their bloody doors anymore? With all that shooting and jumping around i'd seal my doors/Hatches immediately.

Psh... you'd probably put handrails over your bottomless pits, too.

And i'd treat all monsters in my menagerie with kindness in case they ever escape.

Yes, i read the list and adhere to it.

Btt:

Certain things i usually do not allow a slicer to accomplish, manipulating things like life-support, or venting whole ships to kill the crew are for me a no-go.

If my players insist on doing it i do it to them too sometimes later.

Edit: I apologize if my comments seem messed up but the i-net in our company keeps acting up since a few 'upgrades'. Don't we just love semi-competent IT guys?

What would i actually do when i had control of the ship? Vent it to space! No use destroying a perfectly good ship.

And this is why I will never allow this sort of thing in my game. I played in a space game (GURPS) many years ago, and our hacker would do this to every ship that even looked at us funny.

"What?!? They're questioning our ID? That's it, I'm opening all their airlocks! Muhuhahahah!!"

It was no fun at all for any of the rest of us, although he had a blast. That campaign didn't last very long as none of the rest of us wanted to play with the Murder Hobo Munchkin.

There's no way that I would allow remote control* of a ship unless it did have a special slave circuit installed (yes, a triumph or two and a destiny point might make that happen), but even a slave circuit for remote flight would never be installed that allowed control of airlocks and/or life support.

* - Interfering with systems to give the other pilot setback dice? Sure. Direct control? No.

I envision the Star Wars universe to be very much a dichotomy of tech levels, at least from our perspective. Think about it. They've got Artificial Intelligence that rivals real intelligence. They have Hyperspace. They have computers far more powerful than anything we can imagine (astromechs). Blaster weapons, shields, real-time holographic communication. Are we even certain that their computers are silicon-based binary CPUs? I Would think they're probably closer to something like a neural network ala Asimov. (another '70s thing - look him up)

But at the same time, they are so far behind us in certain areas. Obviously, this has a lot to do with the time that Star Wars was written. There was no internet, no cell phones - heck even cordless phones didn't exist. Televisions were just getting a "clicker", but it was still a very rare luxury. However, I also like to think that that's just the way it is in that universe.

I like the concept that wireless information and control access had been "removed" from society long ago because of security reasons - or perhaps never existed for those very same reasons. Wireless communication is fine, but not control of critical systems, or access to critical data. Not by default.

Recently an article in a newspaper caught my eye:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2015/02/23/14-year-old-hacks-connected-cars-with-pocket-money/

In the discussion the risks were talked about and i said that i would never buy such a car.

When i got asked whats so bad about someone starting your car, managing your radio and/or lights are i listed the following things:

Getting your car started means it can be switched off during a drive,

your radio suddenly blaring music at the max setting surely makes you twitch,

and my lights getting turned off during the night or in a tunnel is perfect for causing an accident.

Let's not get into nastier ways to mess things up.

And along those lines i think what designers would do in Star Wars.