Make me less dumb, please!

I'm not the best at writing stories, but if you're writing about a hacker...

MAKE SURE HE HAS A REAL LIFE!!!!!!!!

"Hacker's" nowdays simply mean "computer literate folk"... and this is the future you're writing about. Maybe this guy weight lifts, thats why he's so badass riding his bike with his lappy in his backpack. Or maybe he likes running alot, and every morning he'd go for a jog around the city. Go to a friend's house and shower off or whatever.

Maybe he lives with his girlfriend who's providing for him? Hoping he'll "Make it big someday"... just an idea. Play around with this. But he must not in any way be socially inept. Because, thats just retarded.

Read ALL you can about Adrian Lamo (it'll help you with this story tons)
http://www.google.com/search?q=adria...utf-8&oe=utf-8


As for his laptop. It should most likely NOT be top-of-the-line. This guy lives on teh streets, he has no money for such fancy crap. He should be very mediocre in the begenning of this story, and turn out pretty badass during the end (either with tons of money, or a new lifestyle, or both, or he just solved a puzzle or something, I dunno...).

And there has to be a reason he knows all of these skills, or how he got into computing and didn't turn out to be such a lowlife bum. Maybe he still gets high/drunk with friends? Smokes cigs - that'll give some life to this character.

*yawns*...i'll write more later

Just for reference: Read the Cuckoo's egg by Clifford Stoll
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stoll/cuckoos_egg.html

I dunno. I don't think Cyberpunk is really supposed to be all that realistic. It's more a platform for exploring a mix of larger-than-life stereotypes and gritty postmodern philosophy.

To me personally, cyberpunk acts as a magnifying glass aimed at human beings (who have essentially remained unchanging for tens of thousands of years) who are interacting with technology that is changing on an hourly basis, never mind yearly.

I think that's the real frisson of the genre. That ongoing guilt trip, the jagged edge of always wondering if we're doing the right thing, or if we've just pushed the wheelchair down the mountain...

the hacker has to like the deftones...and he cant be runnin windows me...maybe 2000 or xp but no ME or Mac (sry apple fans). The other guys r right...linux would be cool. Are u gonna have a boy girl relationship or strictly him hackin the whole time? Maybe he could have ADD? Just kinda a personality twist or somethin ya know? Like he's never played sports r done real great in school cuz he has ADD and computers r the only thing he's real good at? Oh and dude...he's gotta have a dog named drake...dunno why just thought it'd be his lil companion...he fetches floppy disks for him and attacks the FBI guys or whatever.

Oh an hey...have him in high school...ya know goin through all that **** and puttin up with school and friends maybe...prolly too much off topic but i mean gotta have a lil of that stuff.

Can it end with him installing Linux in his brain, going wrong and killing himself??

I always wanted that to happen.

My advice is to try to be as original as you can with the names and details of the characters....it would make the story more interesting with a hacker character that doesn't sound like every other hacker story out there. That way your work will stand out much better. You are off to a good start though....write a draft and show it off! I'm interested to see how it goes.

yeh like manicchester said...dont make it like the movie hackers or anything...have real stuff in it...not like cool graphics or anything (well it is a book so i guess u couldnt see it) but dont have all the cool effects cuz thats where u start to lose interest...at least the people that actually know a bit about computers. 1 reason why the matrix is so popular cuz they stick to the real stuff besides the sweet graphics and plot...they used nmap in there :)

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By: deftones12
the hacker has to like the deftones...and he cant be runnin windows me...maybe 2000 or xp but no ME or Mac (sry apple fans). The other guys r right...linux would be cool.

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Agreed, he MUST like the deftones :P.

But no. Don't have him run any Microsoft products, nor Apple. Why? Not because their shitty OS's, but rather because they're both run by single companies behind them. In the next 20 years there WON'T be a Windows2k, or XP, nor an OSX - if you get what I mean.

Just have him running some generic (Free) linux distro - that way you only need to specify hardware specifications - and the reader can imagine how "l33t" a futuristic linux distro would be.

Just my 2 cents

Also, you probably want to stay away from using just the name "Halo"...you are correct there, you don't want to use names like that that is very familiar with Microsoft. Keep us informed of what your ideas are!

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Originally posted here by (V)URD0K
dual monitor setup sounds sweet, running slackware, old laptop for mobility and at home he/she (have a girl hacker... it'll be a twist.... and politically correct) has 3 or 4 old comps... 733MHz, stuff like that.... dunno about internet, some hackers use cable or dsl and others use dialup... hope this helps a lil. -(V)

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Man, it's crazy to think that 733 is considered old. My laptop is an 866 and she's still chugging along quite nicely. My Linux box is a 466 or something like that and works beautifully. It's not about the hardware so much as skill, though a custom build Voodoo rig w/ a T1 connection wouldn't hurt either :D