darkmonki

I just wish there was a better acronym for Ghost In The Shell than "Gits". It just puts me in mind of a bunch of people walking around Birmingham city centre pissing up the walls and annoying women with suggestive language...

Then the idea of a sequel? I wouldn't pay money to go watch a bunch of Gits...

For me it all depended on the game. I used to run self-contained games in the same world, so the characters and plot were different, but there was a consistent over-riding meta plot. In the final game I ran, all the PC's were either members or affiliates of a yakuza clan in NYC, which was breaking into an open civil war. Of course, there was a major corporation (actually an AI) behind the whole thing, and they had to bring the AI down to stop the war. So I guess it was a revolution of a sort...

I don't give it up for anyone.

... Oh, sorry, Neenz, thought you meant something else...

Personally, I use the online mini-movies to test my latest RealPlayer codecs...

Erm...

Technically Welsh?

I just went through every one of Smogo's Whitby pics and I recognise no one. Not one person... Jeez, I'm so out of the loop these days...

Personally, I find both pleasing. For different reasons. Of course, it all depends if there's other people around...

However, although I have discovered there is no such thing as too much sex, I have also discovered that there is such a thing as too much porn. I watched something like nine hours of Swedish Erotica videos with a bunch of friends over for the weekend once and it really stops being a turn-on after the first 30 minutes or so.

I was hoping for some more action and a little less excruciating pain, myself.

For my role, I would like to be Agent Thursday, one of the black trenchcoat-wearing henchmen of the bad guy who dies somewhere towards the end of act 3 in a hail of small-arms fire. Preferably after Agent Thursday gets to shag either one of PMG's lesser known behind-the-scenes team, or Jet Girl.

Is that so much to ask for?

Well, Laurie, like drugs and alcohol, it may not be necessary, but it sure can be fun.

Or rather... when you've worn out as many vibrators as our friendly neighbourhood Cybersexkitten, who needs porn?

Lonesoul Blackknight's got a point. What do we consider cyberpunk music? Is it that weird concept of music as social change that Pondsmith was pushing? Or just anarchic party vibes? In other words, which is more cyberpunk, U2's Pride (In The Name Of Love) or Kiss's I Wanna Rock & Roll All Night (And Party Every Day)? Or is it music inspired by cyberpunk themes, a la Fear Factory, Pitchshifter or Frontline Assembly (Tactical Neural Implant, anyone?)?

Personally, for me, it's just like the cyberpunk movie debate. The only good cyberpunk films out there are ones which only border on cyberpunk, or which take some ideas from the genre, but are not really cyberpunk at all... More... Futuristic, shall we say. Music that claims to be cyberpunk is usually pretty bad. Billy Idol's Cyberpunk album is good example here. Or Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Tho SSS truly was so bad it was good). Some music which is influenced by cyberpunk is pretty good, say, in the lyrics, or through the use of technology. Other music, has nothing to do with the genre, but people consider it good cyberpunk music. Pondsmith recommends listening to Bob Marley and Public Enemy to get that CP Flava, nothing wrong with these artists, but they have nothing to do with CP at all.

I think what I'm trying to say is... Music is as music does. Some people listen to NWA and say This Is Cyberpunk, others listen to Clock DVA and say This Is Cyberpunk, others listen to Bon Jovi or Shania Twain and say This Is Cyberpunk... Truth is, none of it is. It's just music. It's what it does to US that makes it Cyberpunk. "All else is dust and air."

Quote (Lonesoul Blackknight @ Oct. 04 2002,14:02)

Not only that...There's a CLan like feeling in heavy metal communities, at least in Spain, it's sort of ''Edgerunners' Guild'' or so... not only that, but many Heavy metal songs talk about how we shudl change a bit our environment, that is, socially..A good example '' Tears Of the Mandrake'' don't remember the group right now.. doubt it ,but look for Helloween...any way...Master of Puppets (metallica, i know this one ) and many more....Deep purple has a couple of good ones (smoked on the water ) i mean,...it's out there...The Revolution, the Change...just opoen a bit to other music...(by the way, not so Cyberpunk in essence but their strength and their will for Revolution and Change is admirable : Hammerfall, Templars Of Steel and many others). And about the way...I don't feel very keen on Nu metal---I dont't see them actually telling us to change anything or to follow our way (not tat we should wait for anyone to tell us, but they lack the strength and passion of heavy metal and the subliminal/direct message of hip hop)...I think they just cry and nag about ''how 'orrible this good old world has become and im going to sit down and cry while everything goes to hell''

Hmm... Old school metal (or 80's Hair Bank metal as it has become known to VH1 viewers) is probably the least cyberpunk music out there, though I have a feeling the Pondsmiths were listening to a lot of that when writing Cyberpunk. Yeah, sure, there were some songs with political sentiment, but for every track like Metallica's "One", there were 10 tracks like Warrant's "Cherry Pie".

Nu Metal is a bit pants. Actually, most of it is a huge pile of pants. Creed?   But SOAD has some interesting things to say, it's just that the rest seem to have been watching way too much of MTV's "The Real World" and seem to think that song writing and the confession booth are one and the same...

Sorry about the metal rant. I really don't mean to get at you. I'm just having an unfun week this week and taking it out on people relentlessly. Welcome to the boards, amigo.

Depending on whether you like your electro four-to-the-floor or with breakbeats...

Goteki

Hardknox

Personally I'm a huge fan of the breakbeats, so I love Hardknox. But they only produced one album back in 99. If you like that sort of edgy Prodigy-style stuff, get hold of a copy, you won't be disappointed.

I'm curious to know which American's impression you're speaking of? Willliam Gibson or Mike Pondsmith?

Sorry... I'll post something intelligent at a later time.

151. I'm kicking it up this month!

Or images in the frames. Or anything, really. You hosting them on another site, Bullet?

I gots your revolution right here, man...

Grrr...

Like I said, the numbers were loosely based on current prices in LA. I simply went to a commercial realtor's website and checked out some average prices for office and warehouse / factory buildings. Not know much about how spiffy/unspiffy the locations are in LA, I made up some of the numbers, but it seemed to be something to go on. Y'all can fudge around with that as much as you want. I do believe that Rockwolf simply wanted a ballpark figure he could throw at his players to find how much damage they'd caused when they blew a bulding up, IIRC...

Which is exactly what happens to people who watch too much QVC.

T'is not the job of Bubba to be quiet. T'is the job of the media to quit printing what he says.

I get the feeling lots of people here love it for hands-down-your-knickers reasons...

Myself, if someone would edit out the spinning comic book bits which make me nauseous, and dub over Lori Petty's with... Oh, I don't know, anyone but that little girl from Party Of Five, then I can watch it.

Better still, just edit out everything but Jet Girl. Yeah... Jet Girl is miiiiighty cute...

If Wile E. Coyote was just hungry, I'm sure he'd have found some other source of food by now...  

I agree. The War On Terror for me is for the US to go into every single country on the planet that harbors terrorists. Including, but not limited to: Northern Spain, Kashmir, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Japan, the Phillipines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and most central African nations. No sense in starting a "war" you're not prepared to finished, right? And certainly no sense in starting a "war" that can't be won...

Depends on the three L's, doesn't it?

For a commercial building, let's say you figure out the square footage of the land area then multiply cost by location...

Combat Zone: $15/sf

Industrial Zone: $30/sf

Commercial Zone: $40/sf

Moderate Security Residential Zone: $60/sf

High Security Residential Zone: $90/sf

Luxury Residential Zone: $125/sf

Then... multiply that by the amount of floors on the building and voila. Basic way of calculating commercial building space. These numbers are loosely based on current LA figures and would go up for a city like NYC, where there is less space to build, or down for places like Tulsa, where there is more building space.

Not sure how that would work with residential buildings, though...

Yep. Martha Stewart Living is definitely soma. I'm sure somewhere in the book there's someone saying that it's "a good thing"...