But [US] English lets you use words like "super-nonintuitive" ;)

I'd never heard of dev/grrl ? but reminds me of why I lament the cultural influences of the present www on SR's matrix, probably from about the time of Matrix in SR3.

She's the "New Kid" on the JackPoint whose reason for being is severely in question. I've used the term "Eternal September" a few times... Often in reference to "everyone" being in the Matrix in the '70s, and a few other issues.

September was often a bad time for Usenet, as a lot of new students would find themselves with an e-mail address and access to Usenet for the first time ever. And it'd be up to the "Old Folks" on the Internet to teach them the early forms of Netiquette and such. In 1993, when Internet services started becoming available to people frequently and giving people access to Usenet as part of their services (Remember when AOL would keep sending you disks in the mail? If not, go to sleep! It's past your bedtime!), and the influx of newbies from all about the place, some of whom were quite unprepared to even contemplate that there were different codes of conduct to be found in this new place, not to mention a newly available anonymous ability to post and not be connected to yourself which gave some people feelings of power. Yeah, things went downhill fast.

The "Old Hat" of Usenet called it "The Eternal September" or "The September That Never Ended". Some say it's ended now that Usenet isn't used much any more by major ISPs, but, well, I figure it's just moved on.

I, and likely a number of old Deckers who remember their Matrix History, are likely to dub the creation and dispersion of the Wireless Matrix as a "Second Eternal September".

If /dev/grrl is supposed to be a prime example of that, then she does a damned good job. If she's supposed to be taken seriously, well... Give the character over to me for a few stories. By the time I'm done with her, she'll either be sobbing next to me in my corner when my Tech Support days come back to me, or she'll be as cynical and crotchety as the rest of the folks on JackPoint. She might even survive with some Girlishness intact. But that Unicorn Icon of hers will have some Serrated Steel Teeth and the horn will have Spikes on it.

No, not really.
In fact, strapping super- onto a word is hardly a unique feature of English, which can't be found anywhere else.

But you can combine multiple words into German to make Voltron!

Like "Maschinengewehrkraftwagen"!

French authors added a full chapter on Marseille in Runner Havens French release. Corporate Enclaves included Manhattan, the only new material being a few pages on Lille. Paris hasnt been fully covered since the old France sourcebook in 1997.

I remember some German here (sorry, don't remember who exactly, I have terrible memory for names, unlike faces) complaining that we furreigners are doing it wrong.

That's the actual name for a WWII military vehicle class. Apparently, it means something like "Machine Gun Truck" or some such. So this would be a case of Germans doing it wrong if it's wrong.

I don't think i have seen the Maschinengewehrkraftwagen anywhere yet . .
And i have enough buddies in our armed forces to make up my own mercenary unit of specialists . .
We'd just be a bit thin on the grunts i'm afraid . .
But yes, you CAN do some pretty silly stuff in german. Behold: Galvatron . . err, no, wrong text . .
Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftcapitänsmützenpoliturdosenhalterschraube
rough translation:
screw for holder of a cup of polish for the hat of a captain of the danube steam ship company.
Yes, it's basically a one sentence word. It's a whole sentence in one word.

Also: Yes, our Books are superior! *snickers* ^^

German Superliterature laughs at your lack of syllables!

Oh, and I got it from here.

This is why I love Dumpshock. No lie.

Linguistics grad student here. If you think German's bad, you ain't seen nothin'.

Check out Western Greenlandic Inuktitut.

Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli.
aliiku-sersu-i-llammas-sua-a-nerar-ta-ssa-galuar-paal-li
entertainment-provide-SEMITRANS-one.good.at-COP-say.that-REP-FUT-sure.but-3.PL.SUBJ/3SG.OBJ-but
'However, they will say that he is a great entertainer, but ...'

Or Classical Ainu.

Usaopuspe aejajkotujmasiramsujpa.
usa-opuspe a-e-jaj-ko-tujma-si-ram-suj-pa
various-rumors 1-APL-REFL-far-REFL-heart-sway-ITER
'I keep swaying my heart afar and toward myself over various rumors.' (i.e., I wonder about various rumors.)
(Shibatani 1990: 72)

This is why I do SE Asian languages. We don't have none of this morphological bullshit.

Or Welsh.

...

Let's not go there.

Welsh phonology is as scary or scarier than the morphology if you ask me.

Rhy hwyr.

(Too late!)

that looks enough like something from cthulu to give me the willies

And this is what it sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV8d9ParDis


edited for link fail

You guys are looking at /dev/ all wrong.

Just pretend she is a year-old metasapient AI housed in a clone body. That's what I choose to believe, and my world is instantly better for doing so..

Dude.
1. Use Google.
2. Read the first two or three entries popping up about "Maschinengewehrkraftwagen".
3. Think.
4. Now, and only now, post a reply to this thread.

That's pre WW2.
And i said i have never SEEN OR HEARD about that yet.

Exactly. No surprise that you've never seen one in action, hm?

I always get stuck at this part. I try, but nothing happens.

Hmmm, could this t be due to a dropbear encounter?

(PS:Is there a dropbear emoticon?)

Never had an encounter with GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!

Heh.

Also, my favourite ('favourite') part of the Almanac is the part where your favourite writes a school work on Deus.

Seriously, that is so wrong on so many, many levels ...

Ok, what section is that in? I think I need to read that.

Page 83, "Corporate Downfall", her shadowtalk.

I postet a complete rundown of the book's contents here back when it was released.

Ah, I thought she'd written the Corporate Downfall section. That's much less entertainingly bad. Though I do think it's funny she wrote a paper on it. Not like anyone makes it out of the Arcology alive. At least, it looks like the scariest adventure ever from a lethality perspective. That thing is deadly, and I'm not overly familiar with 3e.

A German version is in the works. It will include the MilSpecTech e-book as additional content (just as the German Street Magic re-release includes Digital Grimoire and the German Corporate Enclaves includes Manhattan).
Some of the original contents will be replaced by new stuff - there won't be any of the racist crap (Auschwitz, gypsies) in the German version!

Anyone else feel like the Shadowtalk and the articles in 6WA were written by people who never shared notes or communicated? The maintext will be on one thing, and the shadowtalk will all be on some totally different subject like it was the subject of the article. It's really confusing. The Year of The Comet blurb is a few eyewitness accounts of Ghostwalker and the rift, and the shadowtalk is all about the probe attempts by various corps to shoot the comet. In the Corporate Downfall section the blurb is about voodooels and the shadowtalk is about /dev/grrrrl's homework and Slamm-O name-dropping Dumpshock. None of which relate in any way. Who designed this?

Their not commenting the article, their commenting the year in question and the big think for runners that year was the probe race of the corps.

It certasinly is and even if you make it out, running with it like you are supposed to, the PCs are dead.

what's so amusing is that this little note nullifies the entire premise of Emergence. Which is that nobody knows AI are real and they enter the world stage as something new and exciting, as opposed to the Matrix equivalent of a nuclear meltdown. Going with that in mind - that school children write essays on Deus - this is like a worldwide pro nuclear power movement inspired by the Tschernobyl meltdown (and, probably, Fukushima). Not very plausible at all.

Just a quick follow-up, here be cover with dragon

Damn you Germans for getting better coverwork (and writing!) than us Merkins!

A lot of people making it out of the Arcology alive and suffering related stress disorders is canon.
Actually, the whole Network arc is based on that.

They're = they are. Their = belonging to them.

Well, by 2072 the world at large knows about AIs, minding that there have been citizenship applications and related media fuss, and that.
Whether the general public knows about Deus is another question altogether; but what one megacorp knows, soon makes it into the rumors

10%, making the Arcology incident still a catastrophe as large as 2004's Christmas Tsunami. The death toll is next to the same. The death toll for Tschernobyl (official) is not a tenth of that. Just to keep in mind how catastrophic this was. And with deus' being behind this known, all the fuzzywuzzy acceptance of AI as exciting, new and cuddly is just highly unplausible.


Since a bloody school child knows, it's hardly Top Secret. And she not only heared vague rumors,s he read the entire Arcology sourcebook. And wrote an essay on it. And published it on her corp school network. And nothing happened to her.

Most people treat children with a lot of patience, especially when it appears that they have such a vivid imagination. Just because she wrote it does not make it true. And lets not forget, the facts are in the Shadows, not in the mainstream. /dev/grrl/ is a Shadow person, not a simple child.

You very obviously have zero experience with how totalitarian systems work.


Have you even read the shadowtalk in question?

Yeah, it was a disaster, and yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that the world being accepting towards the AIs and the technos makes no sense. Putting it short, I'm with Clockwork on this one.
My point was - there were survivors, unlike what ggodo thought.

There's patience, and there's "That's a bit too close to the truth, let's take her out to the Space Camp where we can re-educate her into being a space cadet. And everyone else in her class will be jealous of her rather than thinking it's a bad thing!"

Also, she's a Simple Shadow Child. Honestly, I keep expecting to read about how she was turned into a bullet sponge and Butch complaining about the number of times she's had to get fixed up in a way that won't have the schools crying out about child abuse on her parents.

I wish I was more reliable in my writing (Just found out where that issue comes from, BTW, so that might be changing soon!), I'd give her a few stories that'll change her outlook on life a fair bit and at least use a damned DataSearch Program before opening her Soypie Hole!

Agree on all you wrote. I had the same feeling, regarding Clockwork, reading Emergence.


Actually, see her parents separated and posted on (separate)= installations in the butt of the world (and remarried, forcedly) with the kid being given to a good corp family for re-neducation is a good bet. It's what they did with mouthy children in the East back in the day.

Ummm, You would be wrong...

And Yes, I have...

The fact remains, /dev/grrl is a Shadow talker, therefore she is not a "Normal Person" in the typical sense. She has access to information that the normal person does not. Normal people look at those kinds of people like they are a bit touched, and move along. She is in the Shadows, which sets her apart, regardless of whether you like that or not.

The Obama administration does not count.

I agree...

Seriously, you cannot just blather about state secrets in such societies, that WILL come back and bite you. Look at what happens to critical bloggers in China, Iran, Arabia, or what happened to people who merely read a western news magazine (once) in the Eastern Block. Corps are not militant free speech american organisations (Save maybe for Horizon, bzut THAT thing never made sense anyway).

Her teacher would lose his job. Her parents would be either downsized or lose any chance at promotion. She might be given over to 'better parents' the second someone finds her snooping in Shadowland.

Either Deus and the entire Renraku Arcology Shutdown are open info, or /dev/grrl should have been punished (probably indirectly, but so what). She wasn't so it can't be classified in any way.

I was feeling his way to thinking as well... Right up to the point where he sold out one of his own contacts for money. Then I agreed with everyone else on the JackPoint.

"I have to go punch a Clock."


I have no issues with a Corp Kid being in the Shadows, nor even her being a Hacker (Makes better sense than some kind of Combat Monster! A Rigger might also be possible. Some people just have a natural knack for things, but some things require training and body size/weight/magic.).

The issues I have with her are that she's pretty much the poster child for "DERP!" of the Shadows. Which usually are people that do not live long. Like that guy that bragged that he got one over on S-K and was found dead, like, two days later. Her character is heavily 2D, and not very well thought out in a lot of ways. Is this an issue of how she was created, how she was described, or the authors, I'm not sure, but the rest of the characters seem to be more "Real" than she does.

Of course, I'm pretty heavy into character backstory, even if it's not talked about. The amount of information I use to tease people I know about Jon "Money" Johnson's background is staggering, like exactly which building was dropped on him, to where he grew up, to even who his Father is and why they hate each other so much. Even the fact that his sister is a Nun doing Missionary Work in Africa, which is outright stated in one story, often surprises people.

And then there's the whole chapter on Nas' history. And that doesn't even touch on his family or upbringing.

Maybe I'm just elitist about character development being something that you don't do from the start, but have from before the character hits text.

But it is not a STATE secret. It is knowledge that permeates the Shadows. /dev/grrl is not the only one who knows such things, so it is not a big problem that she talks about it. Those in the know won't take action because to do so would lend legitimacy to her claims. They just undermine her by ridiculing her. Happens all the time. Just because the information/knowledge is out there does not mean that the average Joe buys into the hype. The are conspiracy theorist everywhere, and look how they are treated. They are seen as a Joke. Same thing here.

That's not mutually exclusive. Try writing about the Jasmin revolution, or the fact that stuxnet virus and an assassination campaign appear to have killed the national totally non military nuclear weapons energy program in an Iranian blog. That's information that permeates the western media and yet it is heavily repressed in Iran. Or try to cover street protests in China. Try to cover the war in Libya in Gaddafi areas! Just because *someone* knows something does not mean nobody wants to reptress that information. You see, secrets come in layers. Nothing ever is an absolute secret.


You really have no idea how such a system works for those on the inside. Google Doublethink. It's essential to live in a repressive society (or hell, in being a catholic; everybody knew about child abuse in ireland and elsewhere, but nobody talked because of social pressure on those who do). And because of that they would come down on her hard so everybody knows there are questions not meant to be asked.


That's pretty much limited to countries withessentially censorship-free media, where anything CAN be reported, and where the state is in no position to intimidate the population into doublethink. In a repressive society, Joe would know to not talk, ask about or even think about this, because /dev/grrrl did and look what happened to her.

Well, with the application of Social Networking and such that the Wireless Matrix has, you have a lack of censorship (It's hard to put a genie back in a bottle), but heavy monitoring. So, yeah, the info will get out, then lots of evidence (Real, faked, or otherwise) will be provided to prove just how wrong or "Fictional" the event is.

Also, it makes "Disappearing" people harder and easier at the same time. In one way, more people are going to notice if "John-117" disappears. In another, who the hell was "John-117"?

Edit: The scariest thing I showed my group was from my News Reports that I wrote between games. One of them had a communications satellite disappear. And any news reports on it were squashed. And I'm talking official ones from NASA (A wholly owned Subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology!) and major media outlets, and Shadow BBSes themselves! They kind of freaked a little bit, especially when they found it.