Well, I've taken him out to dinner... Oh, the books. 'Vurt' was great, also 'Nymphomation' and 'Needle In The Groove'. I thought 'Pollen' and 'Automated Alice' sucked ('Pollen' because it wrecks the up-in-the-air ending of 'Vurt'). 'Pixel Juice' was OK.
Try 'Vurt', just don't expect anything like any SF you've ever read before. If you like everything rational, logical and carefully explained, don't even bother. If you like weird and psychoactive, give it a try.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, Jeff hasn't anything eligible for this year's Hugo, even though books published in the UK are now eligible for 2 years instead of one.
From a brief look at MsgTo's site, it looks as if it only works if all your correspondents use HTML in their mail client. That's because they send them a gif with a message saying "click on the word 'brown' in this picture" to see if they are a machine or not. I don't know about you, but of the, what? five, six? email systems that I use regularly, only one is even capable of displaying HTML and that has it turned off.
What will the next technology be? I've heard of a Japanese company that is developing a device that follows eye movement for use in military applications (target designation for fighter pilots, working with the helmet visor and HUD). This way the pilot doesn't have to take his eyes of the sky to fiddle with the controls currently used for this purpose, and allows for extremely quick changes.
I saw one of these demonstrated at a computer show about 5 years ago. At the time they were being developed for handicapped people to use. The demo was pretty amazing but I've never heard of them since.
However, it did require that you look at the screen all the time and have good control over exactly what you were looking at. Most people tend to flick their eyes all over the screen, so the pointer jumped about quite a lot which didn't exactly make them easy to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I've taken him out to dinner... Oh, the books. 'Vurt' was great, also 'Nymphomation' and 'Needle In The Groove'. I thought 'Pollen' and 'Automated Alice' sucked ('Pollen' because it wrecks the up-in-the-air ending of 'Vurt'). 'Pixel Juice' was OK.
Try 'Vurt', just don't expect anything like any SF you've ever read before. If you like everything rational, logical and carefully explained, don't even bother. If you like weird and psychoactive, give it a try.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, Jeff hasn't anything eligible for this year's Hugo, even though books published in the UK are now eligible for 2 years instead of one.
Steve Davies
From a brief look at MsgTo's site, it looks as if it only works if all your correspondents use HTML in their mail client. That's because they send them a gif with a message saying "click on the word 'brown' in this picture" to see if they are a machine or not. I don't know about you, but of the, what? five, six? email systems that I use regularly, only one is even capable of displaying HTML and that has it turned off.
Steve Davies
I saw one of these demonstrated at a computer show about 5 years ago. At the time they were being developed for handicapped people to use. The demo was pretty amazing but I've never heard of them since.
However, it did require that you look at the screen all the time and have good control over exactly what you were looking at. Most people tend to flick their eyes all over the screen, so the pointer jumped about quite a lot which didn't exactly make them easy to use.
Steve