Have you read Pattern Recognition? Absolutely fabulous stuff. By the by, Burning Chrome was published before Neuromancer.
Honestly, the only novel of Cadigan's I've enjoyed is Mindplayers. Synners is sitting on my shelf somewhere, and I've got a short story collection of hers collecting dust as well.
"Postcyberpunk" (if you believe in such a sub-genre) focuses on family units rather than anti-heroes. Islands in the Net is an example of a future that's not dystopic, and the Eclipse trilogy (if you take into account the fact that, by the end of the trilogy, the protagonists have overthrown the facists).
But generally, you're right. If a novel takes a positive approach to technology, chances are it's run-of-the-mill sf rather than CP.
Re:Here you go.
on
The Escapist
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· Score: 4, Informative
Count Zero by Gibson
Mindplayers by Cadigan (sort of)
Islands in the Net by Sterling
Holy Fire by Sterling
Burning Chrome (short story) by Gibson
Cyberpunk (short story) by Bruce Bethke
City Come A Walkin' by John Shirley (if by "cyberspace" you mean a proto-network comprised of anthropomorphised city-AIs, and if by "hacking" you mean said city-AIs messing around with the real world via this network)
Eclipse trilogy by John Shirley (a lot of dystopian, but a fair amount of "hacking" and man-machine interfaces, which might interest you)
I'm not talking about the plot, which is absolutely fascinating to me (even as a Christian), but about the form, or the mode, of the game. I don't know any other games that feature a similar episodic element where the player controls successive characters. If you don't like Christianity, that's your problem, but understand that there's nothing wrong with making a game about it, and if you're so adamantly anti-Christian (as your post seems to imply), then perhaps you shouldn't comment on a story about "How games and religion could mix."
I posted too soon, I suppose. An adventure game based on the life of Paul (post-conversion) would be pretty kick-ass too. He's gotta travel around the Mediterranean & spread the gospel.
Last one, I promise: take the episodic system of Eternal Darkness for the Cube and trace the lineage of Christ from Adam. Each "chapter" takes about an hour to complete and has an extremely focused task. I'm not creative enough to figure out what Adam would have to do, but Noah's got a boat, David's got lots of interesting stuff to do, and then you've got Solomon, Esther, Ruth, throw in a couple of prophets, and you've got yourself an interesting game based on the Tanakh. Dunno if you'd want to let the player control Christ, though, so maybe Peter or one of the other disciples?
So here's the story: the Jews spend 40 years wandering around in the desert before they reach the promised land. Moses dies shortly before they enter, leaving Joshua in charge. Now, if you've actually read the book, you'd realise that it's all blood and gore: Yahweh commands the Jews to kill everybody and everything. Can we say RTS?
So they enter the promised land, call upon the power of Yahweh to do miraculous stuff (Walls of Jericho, battle at AI where the sun & moon stand still), and take over the land. Traditional RTS elements using real geograhical locations and a Biblical back-story. Age of the Promised Land, anybody?
But for somebody who was actually planning on buying HL2, this translated to $50 off (assuming that the person wanted to buy both) when you purchase both, essentially. I've had a lot of crappy throwaway gifts before, but HL2 definitely seems to have been worth it.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Opera updates are released about once a month, if that. The installer is only 3MB, which even for a 56k user is only 15 minutes' worth of downloading. Heck, Firefox is 4.7MB, for that matter. On my DSL connection, we're talking about maybe 20 seconds tops to download. Now, what exactly about downloading the installer once a month annoys you? I don't get it.
I meant specifically amazon.ca, not a smaller online retailer. I buy box sets from.com all the time because they're typically $20-30 CAD cheaper than up here. Sorry you had a bad experience! Out of curiousity, do you guys have any duties or taxes to pay to import stuff from Canada?
God, wouldn't *that* be nice! As it is, the game at release was $50 USD in the US and $50 CAD up here in Canada. This is typical for most computer and video games. What I can't figure out is why you yanks don't shop at Amazon.ca and save a ton of cash! Anyway, I've never seen a dip in price within the first month on any 'cube game, at any rate; Metroid Prime 2 is still $50, which is what I paid for it at Christmas.
Because I'm in Canada and, for starters, the link you provided doesn't have any sellers willing to ship to Canada, and second, even if they did, the shipping & exchange rate would make it almost the same as it would be to buy brand new.
I don't know if you've ever bought a used 'cube game, but the last one fom EB (Eternal Darkness) was so scratched and thrashed that it wasn't playable. When I buy games, I buy them to play & to KEEP so that I'll be able to play it in the future.
...it's definitely time for the prices for these console games to come down. Although I love my Gamecube, this is what drives me nuts about it: the prices never seem to really go down. Take, for instance, super smash brothers melee: up here in Canada, it's *still* $40 or $50 brand new, depending on the retailer, and it's what, four years old? There are the odd exceptions, but it's extremely rare to get *any* gamecube game brand new for under $40, unless it's crap.
PC games drop much quicker, which is nice because people who want to play the game on release date get to pay a premium and the rest of us just have to wait a month or two before it drops $10-15. On the other hand, I've been waiting over six months for Resident Evil 4 to drop from $50 to $35 or $40, and it's still only down to $45.
Sony's move is definitely welcome; too bad I don't have a PS2;)
Re:Hardware Translucency in Linux
on
Longhorn Preview
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Absolutely not. But what do you do when you're interested in a game but there's no demo? I wish to God that I had pirated Moo3 before I bought *that* disaster!
There have occasionally been extremely interesting apps showcased on Slashdot that I wouldn't have given a second look had I not taken the time to figure out what they actually did. All I'm asking for is one sentence explaining what it does and what platforms it's available on. That's it.
To forestall my getting modded down, it's probably my fault that I even saw this story; I thought it was a general story when it appears that it belongs in the "Developers" sub-category. I'm obviously not a developer, and from your comment I would assume that anybody who *is* a developer would know what Eclipse is. My bad.
Reasonable for who? I'm not a programmer (I gave up and googled it) and therefore wouldn't have come across the term in the course of my everyday life. It's "News for Nerds," not "News for Programmers." Anyway, would it really be so difficult to include a brief description of what the program does? We're talking about *one sentence*, not a doctoral dissertation.
For those of us not in the know and who might possibly be interested in this application, would it be possible from now on for submitters to include a brief description of what the program actually does, and maybe what OSes you can use it on? I think this is fair considering anytime I want to R the FA it's already been pounded into glue by the slashdot hordes.
It's not the user that's limited, but the speech recognition software. When I type, I can be reasonably sure that what I'm typing will actually appear on the screen (even with my eyes closed or looking away). Voice recognition, on the other hand, isn't as accurate, and any increase in speed gained by using speech will be lost for a for a blind person when they need to get the computer to read back what you've written and manually correct it.
Spoken like a true console gamer (don't be offended, my other gaming box is Cube;) ) While console games are built from the ground up to take advantage of a controller, it's nearly impossible to play a native PC FPS with a controller. For example: Metroid Prime 1 & 2 allows you to run around really well in two dimensions, but the third dimension (up and down) implementation is somewhat clunky. To make up for this, they've got an auto-target function. Compare this to Doom 3, for example, where without an auto-target function, it would be nearly impossible to play without a keyboard and mouse.
...are there any sites out there that offer Windows updates without having to use the blasted installer? Just curious for, you know... academic reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Pattern Recognition was published in late 2003.
If you're serious, I'm truly sorry.
Honestly, the only novel of Cadigan's I've enjoyed is Mindplayers. Synners is sitting on my shelf somewhere, and I've got a short story collection of hers collecting dust as well.
But generally, you're right. If a novel takes a positive approach to technology, chances are it's run-of-the-mill sf rather than CP.
Mindplayers by Cadigan (sort of)
Islands in the Net by Sterling
Holy Fire by Sterling
Burning Chrome (short story) by Gibson
Cyberpunk (short story) by Bruce Bethke
City Come A Walkin' by John Shirley (if by "cyberspace" you mean a proto-network comprised of anthropomorphised city-AIs, and if by "hacking" you mean said city-AIs messing around with the real world via this network)
Eclipse trilogy by John Shirley (a lot of dystopian, but a fair amount of "hacking" and man-machine interfaces, which might interest you)
That's all I've got for now.
I'm not talking about the plot, which is absolutely fascinating to me (even as a Christian), but about the form, or the mode, of the game. I don't know any other games that feature a similar episodic element where the player controls successive characters. If you don't like Christianity, that's your problem, but understand that there's nothing wrong with making a game about it, and if you're so adamantly anti-Christian (as your post seems to imply), then perhaps you shouldn't comment on a story about "How games and religion could mix."
Last one, I promise: take the episodic system of Eternal Darkness for the Cube and trace the lineage of Christ from Adam. Each "chapter" takes about an hour to complete and has an extremely focused task. I'm not creative enough to figure out what Adam would have to do, but Noah's got a boat, David's got lots of interesting stuff to do, and then you've got Solomon, Esther, Ruth, throw in a couple of prophets, and you've got yourself an interesting game based on the Tanakh. Dunno if you'd want to let the player control Christ, though, so maybe Peter or one of the other disciples?
So they enter the promised land, call upon the power of Yahweh to do miraculous stuff (Walls of Jericho, battle at AI where the sun & moon stand still), and take over the land. Traditional RTS elements using real geograhical locations and a Biblical back-story. Age of the Promised Land, anybody?
But for somebody who was actually planning on buying HL2, this translated to $50 off (assuming that the person wanted to buy both) when you purchase both, essentially. I've had a lot of crappy throwaway gifts before, but HL2 definitely seems to have been worth it.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Opera updates are released about once a month, if that. The installer is only 3MB, which even for a 56k user is only 15 minutes' worth of downloading. Heck, Firefox is 4.7MB, for that matter. On my DSL connection, we're talking about maybe 20 seconds tops to download. Now, what exactly about downloading the installer once a month annoys you? I don't get it.
I meant specifically amazon.ca, not a smaller online retailer. I buy box sets from .com all the time because they're typically $20-30 CAD cheaper than up here. Sorry you had a bad experience! Out of curiousity, do you guys have any duties or taxes to pay to import stuff from Canada?
God, wouldn't *that* be nice! As it is, the game at release was $50 USD in the US and $50 CAD up here in Canada. This is typical for most computer and video games. What I can't figure out is why you yanks don't shop at Amazon.ca and save a ton of cash! Anyway, I've never seen a dip in price within the first month on any 'cube game, at any rate; Metroid Prime 2 is still $50, which is what I paid for it at Christmas.
I don't know if you've ever bought a used 'cube game, but the last one fom EB (Eternal Darkness) was so scratched and thrashed that it wasn't playable. When I buy games, I buy them to play & to KEEP so that I'll be able to play it in the future.
PC games drop much quicker, which is nice because people who want to play the game on release date get to pay a premium and the rest of us just have to wait a month or two before it drops $10-15. On the other hand, I've been waiting over six months for Resident Evil 4 to drop from $50 to $35 or $40, and it's still only down to $45.
Sony's move is definitely welcome; too bad I don't have a PS2 ;)
Absolutely not. But what do you do when you're interested in a game but there's no demo? I wish to God that I had pirated Moo3 before I bought *that* disaster!
Are demos available for every game? No.
There have occasionally been extremely interesting apps showcased on Slashdot that I wouldn't have given a second look had I not taken the time to figure out what they actually did. All I'm asking for is one sentence explaining what it does and what platforms it's available on. That's it.
To forestall my getting modded down, it's probably my fault that I even saw this story; I thought it was a general story when it appears that it belongs in the "Developers" sub-category. I'm obviously not a developer, and from your comment I would assume that anybody who *is* a developer would know what Eclipse is. My bad.
Reasonable for who? I'm not a programmer (I gave up and googled it) and therefore wouldn't have come across the term in the course of my everyday life. It's "News for Nerds," not "News for Programmers." Anyway, would it really be so difficult to include a brief description of what the program does? We're talking about *one sentence*, not a doctoral dissertation.
For those of us not in the know and who might possibly be interested in this application, would it be possible from now on for submitters to include a brief description of what the program actually does, and maybe what OSes you can use it on? I think this is fair considering anytime I want to R the FA it's already been pounded into glue by the slashdot hordes.
It's not the user that's limited, but the speech recognition software. When I type, I can be reasonably sure that what I'm typing will actually appear on the screen (even with my eyes closed or looking away). Voice recognition, on the other hand, isn't as accurate, and any increase in speed gained by using speech will be lost for a for a blind person when they need to get the computer to read back what you've written and manually correct it.
Spoken like a true console gamer (don't be offended, my other gaming box is Cube ;) ) While console games are built from the ground up to take advantage of a controller, it's nearly impossible to play a native PC FPS with a controller. For example: Metroid Prime 1 & 2 allows you to run around really well in two dimensions, but the third dimension (up and down) implementation is somewhat clunky. To make up for this, they've got an auto-target function. Compare this to Doom 3, for example, where without an auto-target function, it would be nearly impossible to play without a keyboard and mouse.
...are there any sites out there that offer Windows updates without having to use the blasted installer? Just curious for, you know... academic reasons.
I'm not aware of a site called "Amazonspaymentsystemsucks.com," nor have I heard any horror stories about Amazon stiffing customers.