Anne was one of the first female authors that I managed to find in the SF&F field. She was one of the first authors I read that had really great, strong female characters. She helped teach me that you don't have to be a man to be smart, strong, successful, that you don't have to be a man to be a hero. Her fiction helped shape my perspective, along with authors like Andre Norton and eventually (scoff if you will) Mercedes Lackey. Thank you, Anne McCaffrey.

It wasn't a software house - it was a laser engraving business, doing custom work for businesses and individuals, and then also catering to the roleplaying gamer market. He frequently said (well, says, I imagine) that owning your own business is the second most over-rated thing in the world. The number one most over-rated thing being natural childbirth.

Opening text: Together, they will learn there can be no good without evil... No love without hate.... No heaven without hell... No light without darkness.

And my first thought was: I'm a geek who happens to be female, please don't lump me with a demo by gender! But really, I suppose that's true of most geeks. I suspect, for example, that the interest in sports of the average Slashdot reader is somewhat lower than "normal". Etc.

Not so much. Outside, today it will be 95 degrees F. Inside my place of employment, I sometimes wear a scarf this time of year. *sigh*

It's amazing the differences, working on a long term project. How long term? Our first released version was in the mid-nineties - and yes, we're doing more than just maintenance, even now. It's a defense project.

I'm on a team (within the larger project, which is 70-100 people) of seven people. Four are over forty, in some cases by a lot, one is about to turn forty, I'm thirty-three, and then we have our one, shiny just out of college person. We're pretty representative of the project as a whole, with the UI team trending younger than the others. The idea that older people don't know what they're doing, even on new languages, is pretty silly to me.

It seems to be there must be a very narrow band in amount of plot for a conversion of game to movie to be successful. First person shooters (ala Doom) very seldom have enough plot, so it's really an action (or action-horror) movie with a thin veneer of the game laid on top of it, because they had to make too much up.

Conversely, some games have too much plot to be made into movies. With the announcement of a (direct to DVD, anime style) Dragon Age movie, the fan community I belong to when crazy. In a negative fashion. Why? We knew they would never make the choices we made. Heck, it's a mainly female community and we started with the cynical observation that they would surely pick a male hero.

So: you need a game that has a recognizable plot line to it, but not one that allows much impactful choices by the player.

I was going to contradict you, but I was a good girl and checked things. Vernor Vinge's True Names didn't use the term cyberspace, just the concept.

Thought I'd share just because it is still interesting.

I read Neuromancer in the mid-90's, and still found it an interesting read, though I did have the urge to through a bucket of soapy water over everything, with the dark and gritty descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill I'm only willing to point that out because I'm not from Indiana, I just live here.

Combining what you're saying with the blanket statements being responded to, you're saying that you believe that most feminists are man-hating sexists, to the point that it is fair to say that all of them are. I disagree with that statement quite vehemently. I suspect that you would object if I claimed that the majority of men are misogynists who just want women to do traditional feminine things like child-rearing and cooking. I also respectfully disagree with your statement that feminism views things from the perspective of a single gender. In general, the ones that associate with are concerned with examining multiple perspectives.

As one of those rare female posters here on slashdot, thank you for this post. People on one of the feminist geek sites I go to (www.girl-wonder.org) like to point out that people are different even when they claim a particular group name. People disagree. We see this all the time with people on the fringes of political parties and religion, so why not feminism?

I recommend Dreamships by Melissa Scott for a SF book on that subject that feels pretty believable to me, though it's not a Twenty Minutes in the Future kind of book - the AI in question is one designed to guide ships through the other space used for FTL.

Despite having approval on the novels (at least, that's what I've heard), Lucas let a lot of things go into the novels that he later contradicted with the prequels. I feel tremendous sympathy for these novelists scrambling to reconcile what has been written and things that are now, for good or ill, considered canon.

Re: GP's comments about the MMO, I got the impression that Bioware and the Old Republic era works have a much better odor among fans. I know that my husband, who is a much bigger fan than I am, is chomping at the bit for TOR to come out. (And I assure you, he is definitely anti-prequel. He's currently running a D6 WEG Star Wars tabletop game in which he has repeatedly hammered home to the players that the events of the prequels are NOT what happened in his game.)

Because of the cultural perception that romance Isn't Manly, we've developed such low expectations that one to four days (throw in anniversary and birthday) seems great. I will say that the geeky males I've dated seem to be better at it than the average, though. :)

(And I'm from Michigan and I've heard of Sweetest Day.)