ISSUE 8 - RELEASED 04/09/1998 Updated: 04/09/1998 --------------------------------------------------------------------- S E N I O R * C I T I Z E N ! ! ! --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen SENIOR CITIZEN is a flippin' good read of other people's flippin' good read!!! Peruse the wierd and wacky each week thru the miracle that is the megamighty super-information edutainment multimedia ultra-highway Webby thingy!!!!! Any interesting stories, feedback, suggestions?? Mail us!! at senior@forfree.net!!! Subscribe via email!!! Go to our website and register, or mail us! BACK ISSUES: http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/ezine/ ftp://etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Zines/Senior_Citizen/ The soundtrack for this issue is available at: http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/music/8.mid ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ISSUE 8 (04/09/1998) "Do ill clubbers get 'Saturday Night Fever'?!?!?" Written by: Old Fart!!! of the SD!!! Contributors: Colostomy Bag!! of the SD!!!, PAndroid!!! of Page 670!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You know, I don't know what to say in the editorial this week!!! So I don't think I'll say anything!!! Because I can't think of anything to write here!!! Honestly!!! I can't!!!! Think of anything to write!!!!! Here!!!!! Er, that's it!!!! Bye!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ == Moggy on tha webby!!! == You might have heard about that big drum shaped thingy that you push people into in hospitals and it scans them!!! Well, it's called a "cat-scan"!!!! So when we heard there was a "cat scan" competition, we thought it might have been the best looking scans of peoples internal organs!!! But we were wrong!!! It's actually pictures made by people who pushed their pet cats onto scanners and scanned them!!!!!!! http://www.cat-scan.com/ == We get mentioned in Supernews 49!!! == Page 670, run by David Deans, (The bloke who originally suggested the idea of a "newsletter" that eventually became Senior Citizen!!!) has given us a nice review in the Supernews 49 column!!! Thanks for the write-up Dave!!! http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mrdaveo/670.htm == People who mess around with Mario!!! == OK, OK, we saw this in http://www.ntk.net/ , but it's too good to miss!!! There are people around who are messing around with Nintendo Gameboys, and have come up with a Gameboy Technology page with stuff like Gameboy to PC interfaces, and uses for the new Camera and Printer add-ons!!!! Pretty neat-o yummy technology, as they might say in some geeky ezine from the US!!!! http://home.hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/ == If it all goes wrong it in Fiji, you have 12 hours left... == Well, no doubt you'll be aware that there's a lot of people saying that many people have already left it too late to defend themselves against the Millenium Bug, but if you want to *really* leave it to the last moment, here's an idea... Wait till just before midday on 31st December 1999, and get a satellite link to Fiji!!! Because it's just off the International Date Line, it's 12 hours ahead of GMT time, so the Y2K probs will hit there first!!! People in Fiji are making some money from this by advertising itself as the advance warning station for the rest of the world!!!! Only prob- what if the communications equipment there is not Y2K compatible!?!?! http://www.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/059681.htm == Really silly advice!!! == Check this out!!!! Imagine an advice page that went like this!!! * Dear Bad Answer Man, Lately I have been having an excessive amount of gas when I wake up in the morning,is there any way to use this to my advantage? * Bad Answer Mand replies: Yes there sure is ! Attach one end of a garden hose to your rear end,then attach the other end to your coffee maker and toaster.When you wake in the morning your breakfast will be cooked for you ! This is a great website!!!!!!!! http://www.tiac.net/users/lou35/ == Oldie ST demo to appear on PC!!! == If you're an computeing old-timer like us, you may remember these funny programs on 16-bit machines called demos!!! They're not the half-finished games you get on magazine coverdisks as you might think!!!! They're actually really spiffy little audio-visual experiences done for fun, like the ones we do!!!! One of the first demos I saw was this amazingly spangly little production on my little ST in 1989 called "The Union Demo" with loads of whizzy effects!!!! Well, in 1998, someone called Demografica has decided to convert it to the PC!!!! At the moment all tht's been done is conversion of some of the chip music and graphics, but surely it can't be that hard to convert all the "rasters", "fullscreens", and "bitmap scrollers" to the PC and all it's supey-dupey graphics and sound capabilities!!! http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~redrob/Union/ You can already run the original Atari version (mostly) on the PC thanks to Pacifist ST emulator... Well, I say "original"- it's actually a version of the demo cracked by the infamous ST demo-rippers Ripped Off, and put on a compilation menu by Persistance of Vision some time in the early 1990s!!! The really wierd thing is that you can't get an *original* copy of the Union demo over the Internet because the original version was in a wierd custom disk format that could not be copied by any disk copier on the ST!!!! It could only be copied by an inbuilt copier program included with the actual demo!!!! This means it couldn't be spread by any other means, including bulletin boards and FTP!!!!!! Really thinking ahead, weren't they?!?!?!?! http://www.lysator.liu.se/~celeborn/sync/files/demos/union.zip Pacifist is at... http://pacifist.fatal-design.com/ == Byte folded- but still going!!! == Ever had one of those days when nothing ever went right?!?!?! Well, it probably went better than the dudes at the distinguished computing magazine Byte!!!! Their proprietors just turned up and said said: Byte's closed, and you're all sacked- you've got one day to clear your desk, goodbye!!!! Well, there was probably more to it than that, but it sounds just like what happened to me after I produced that documentary "The Wonderful Story of Thrash Metal" for Radio 2!!!!!!! Anyway, Byte dude and famous science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle (You know, the person who writes stuff with David Niven's son, Larry Niven!!!!) has his own site, and on it he's reporting on the various ways the writers from Byte are continuing their projects on the amazing world wide webby!!!! http://www.jerrypournelle.com/fiasco.html Thanks to PAndroid of Page 670 for this info!!! You cen get to Page 670 at http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mrdaveo/670.htm !!! It's a really brillibobs site!!!!! == Linux Babylon!!!! == First there was Hollywood Babylon, a book by Kenneth Anger on Hollywood scandals!!! Then there was Rock 'n' Rock Babylon, a book by Kenneth Anger on rock 'n' rock scandals!!!! Now there's Linux Babylon, which, erm, rather disappointingly is not a book by Kenneth Anger on scandal in the Slashdot crowd, but a new linux-based game platform thingy which is supposed to be geared towards making games programming easy and so on... Apparently you just boot this "Babylon" system up, and then run the game on top of it!!! It uses all the usual Linux library type stuff like Glide, SVGAlib, MEDlib, etc., ... It's in an early stage, but it's an interesting idea!! We can't really see any established games companies actually taking it up to be honest, but it might be really popular with the free-software types, and indeed "bedroom" programmers who are getting increasingly shut out of the games business by proprietary standards!!!!! (Ooooh!!! Aren't we being political this week!!!!) The people behind this hope to port to it other UNIX "flavours", which would make porting games to other hardware platforms pretty easy!!! http://celsius-software.hypermart.net/babylon/ == The Internet makes you depressed!!! == Well, this is surprising!!!! Apparently someone's done a big and expensive study in the US and found out that people spend all their time in front of the computer are more likely to be lonely!!!!!! And because of that they're less likely to be happy!!!! So in summary- heavy internet users are sad lonely geeks!!! Apparently the people who put 1.5 million dollars to find out this shock finding are a bit cheesed off as they thought the survey would say the exact opposite!!!!! But the people that got the money to do the survey (Called "HomeNet"- tells you quite a lot, doesn't it?!?!?) must be laughing!!!! Be careful- apparently clicking this link may make you ONE PER-CENT MORE DEPRESSED and 0.4 PER-CENT MORE LONELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://spyglass1.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/041297.htm Mind you, the average survey margin of error is usually a bit more than 1 per-cent, so it might go either way!!! == ... But internet Shops want to make you happy!!! == Well, one bunch who are going to be a bit annoyed by the above survey are the internet commerce dudes, who according to the following article are depending on the emotions of the average web-surfer!!! Apparently they're using stuff like brand names and nice web-sites to make the surfers happy to part with their money!!! The only problem is that now you can get internet shopping search engines (See issue 6...) to search for the lowest price, which throws their strategy out of the window!!!!!! So I reckon if "HomeNet" did a survey on them, it would be found that working in Internet commerce makes you more depressed!!!!! http://www.ohio.com/bj/business/netrider/docs/006101.htm == Block ads!!!! == If you're getting steadily chesed off by all those ads that appear on web pages and take ages to download, then you might be really interested to know that there are websites and programs to block them!!!! Ad companies are apparently not too worried about these ad-blockers, mainly because not really many people know about them, which is a bit stupid, because stories like the one below are going to make people know about them, aren't they?!?!? http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/news/083098/t2ad.shtml Well, that story rather diplomatically omits to tell you where to get to ad-busting sites... But this story doesn't!!!! http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/netads980825.html And here's that AdWipe prog you might looking for.... http://www.davecentral.com/4790.html == Break your computer!!! == Colostomy Bag doesn't really like PCs!!!! In fact, he wrote an article for a diskmag about how to break a PC and muck up the software!!!! So you can imagine that he really likes this site about breaking up your computer!!! And it goes into quite a bit of detail!!! http://members.aol.com/spoons1000/break/index.html You can read Colostomy Bag's original article at http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/text/pcbreak.txt == Not very smart chips?!?! == Wow!!!! Just in time for Windows 2000, someone's done 1 GIGABYTE memory chips!!!!! The funny thing is that these chips are called DIMMs!!!! No doubt Colostomy Bag will be saying "Windows 2000 is probably written for DIMMs- and it'll need a lot of memory as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!" http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/story.html?s=v/nm/19980901/tc/samsung_1.html == Hobbit questions!! == Well, no doubt you'll have heard the news that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is to be by Peter Jackson the bloke who did that brilliant gentle family film, Bad Taste!!! Now Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, inbetween (as usual) saying how "cool" he thinks the movie could be, he's managed to find the time to actually interview Peter Jackson about it, and get him to answer various viewer questions about the project!!! And guess what- someone asks how gory it's going to be!!!!! http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/lordoftherings.html == Loads of Usenet cancels!! == Have you been on Usenet recently, and noticed no-one was posting on your group?!?!?! Well, your newsgroup might have been the victims of the zillions of cancel messages that have been going around Usenet of late!!! Apparently some nefarious types are using some free crap accounts to cancel zillions of Usenet messages, and are getting away with it!!! The article below suggests that it might be an attempt to disrupt some newsgroups, but we've also seen a major flame-war session from a bunch of saddoes called "Hell Flame Wars", who basically conduct an on-going flamewar amongst themselves, and crosspost to completely irrelevant newsgroups, to rope them in as well!! We wouldn't be too surprised if a lot of cancels were going in their direction!!! http://7am.com/cgi-bin/twires.cgi?1000_t9808310.htm == Negativ CD-land!!!! == Negativland, a bunch of dudes who make records out of sampling everyone else, are not too pleased at the moment!!!!! Apparently their CD plant won't press their latest album, and won't tell them why!!!! The dudes at Negativland HQ, who have already slagged off the record industry a few times in various articles for fanzines and websites, say that record companies have put pressure on the CD plant because of all the naughty sampling on their album!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14765.html == Now musicians can give a D.A.M!!!!!!! == Well, Negativland could try flogging their CD here instead!!! Apparently with this scheme called D.A.M (!!!!) you can sell a CD of your music here and get 50% of the profit!!! You need to make one of the tracks available for downloand tho... http://content.mp3.com/mp3/artist/start.asp#D.A.M. == Still Not-very Hotmail!!!! == MS may have plugged the Javascript "Spartan House", (See issue 6...) but someone's went right ahead and come up with a Shockwave version of it!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/14751.html And here's a demonstration of it... Doesn't the URL look familiar??!?! Yep, it's the guys who did the original Javascript "Spartan Horse"!! http://www.because-we-can.com/users/anon/hotmail/shockwave/mailmess.htm == It ain't cool now!!! == Well, he's been getting famous, and lots of people have been writing about him, so it was only a matter of time beforew there was a massive backlash!!!!! I'm of course talking about Harry Knowles and his movie rumours website Ain't It Cool News!!!! There was some rumblings over the news about Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Harry's enthusiastic reaction (Isn't he always enthusiastic!??!?!) and then the news that Peter Jackson was going to answer readers questions about the films on the site... Then his week his site went one movie rumour too far and posted some rumours seen in the UK movie free mag "Flicks" to the effect that the Star Wars movie had been delayed!!! As many people suspected, this was a crap mag just retelling an old rumour, but in the talkback section accompanying the article turned into a complete slag-off of the whole site, with loads of people going right ahead and calling a Harry "full of shit" and a "sellout"!!! Not that they're jealous of the site or Harry's new found fame or anything... http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/tb_display.cgi?id=2013#5916 Someof them are also posting under false names as well... http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2027&next=1 Personally I don't think the site has changed that much since the revamp in story terms... Harry always used to go on about everything being "cool", and I'm pretty sure older readers remember the "ZX Shrink Chamber" story appearing the in the first issue of Senior Citizen- that was an untrue story as well!!! (See issue 1...) The main difference is the adding of the "talkback" section to the articles, giving free-rein to anyone that wants to slag off Harry and his burgeoning celebrity status!!! == Microwaved experiments?!?!? == Well, if you're sick of making food with it, why not try blowing up things in it?!?!? Well now you can thanks to the Microwave Experiments website!!!! This exciting page tells you how to make stuff like "foil eating plasma" and how to map the "energy zones"!! There are also a few helpful links to stuff like "Microwave ball lightning"!!!! http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/weird/microexp.html == Hotwired re-launches yet again!!! == When Wired news re-launched their site (See issue 4...) we were wondering when Hotwired were going to do the same!!! After all, they always used to be relaunching all the time before!!! Well, now they finally have done it yet again!!! Unfortunately they dropped Jon Katz's regular column (One of the good things about Hotwired!!!) and the "Dream Jobs" section. Now all that's left is Wired News, Webmonkey (The only good bit left now!!!!) and the really crappy computer art section!!! (We do better stuff in our demos, and we don't get arts grants for it!!!!!) Just as well the Newstrolls people moved to a new site!!! (See issue 6...) http://www.hotwired.com/ == Virus for Word & Excel!!! == Well, it was only a matter of time!!!! Excel 97's got it's own macro "Basic" language" just like Word 97, so it was only a matter of time before someone did a macro virus on that was well!!! What's really special about this one, is that it's compatible with both Word and Excel, and can jump between the two types of file!!!! http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?98091.wnshiver.htm == Move over 'Beverly Hills 92029201'!!!! == Now this is wacky!!!! A site that carries the stories that are not allowed in US high school newspapers!!!! And when you see some of the stories, you can see why the schools would want to cover them up!!! http://www.boltreporter.com/ Here's one... Some schools are starting to have breathalyser tests for pupils!!!!! Lessons can't be that boring, surely!!!! http://www.boltreporter.com/news/3063.html == Do you mind if we blow you up in a month!??!? == Nothing like letting your rivals know when you're going to plan a military strike against them!!! Apparently the US are wanting to bomb Iraq again, and are pencilling in October!!! Or at least, so says this article!!!! http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980831/1998083148.html == Email a rabble-rouser!!!! == There are quite a few people in my old university who talk using lots of words ending in "ism" and say "... , basically, ..." a lot, who are going to really like this!!! Protest.net is a site which allows anyone with a cause to advertise their protest, demonstrations, boycotts, etc. and let everyone see it. I'm sure this site is required viewing M15 and CIA people!!!! The best bit about it though is that the contact email addr is rabble-rouser@protest.net !!!! http://www.protest.net/ == First full-length Internet Movie!!! == ... And it's apparently a "B" movie as well!!! Well, it would have to be wouldn't it!?!?! You can't exactly do "The Towering Infero" on a tiny budget can you?!?!?!? So it just as well they're doing "Plan 9 from Outer Space" type stuffs!!! (That's a brilliant movie, BTW!!! You really ought to see it!!!!!) http://www.monsterhome.com/ == Confess!!! == Er, this is a strange site!!!!! Apparently, this is some sort of electronic confession box!!!! I don't know if it works tho- when I tested it by putting "I think the Spice Girls are really good musically!!!", it just repeated the message back to me and then did nothing!!!!! http://www.confess.net/ == Digital photo-faking - yawn!!! == There's been some conference about digitally faking photos!!! I'm surprised they had to wait until digital faking came along to notice that sometimes people fiddle about with photies!!!! In the article below, it says something about the FBI having "a 14-step program for detecting digitally altered photographs"!!!! Presumably step 1 is: "Does it look completely false?"?!?! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14798.html == PGP 6.0 in Europe!!! == This is interesting!!!! Apparently you can get PGP6.0 on a server in Europe- and it hasn't even been announced yet!!!!!!! So much for this "tough" US crypo policy!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/14819.html == Making a splash on the moon!!! == Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sing "Raindrops Keeps Falling On My head" on the Moon in the year 3415?!?!? Welll, probably not- but you never know!!!! This week, some satellite probe has found that there's a lot more water on the Moon than previously thought!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/14808.html == It's a Tragedy!!!! (Doh!!!) == How about this!?!? Apparently if you take drugs and stuff in nightclubs, you become not very well!!!! What's new about that you may think... Well, some bright spark has decided to call the bit where people are not feeling too well "Saturday Night Fever"!!!!! I suppose they'll be saying next that if you take drugs, yu'll have trouble "Stayin' Alive", and it'll give you the "hee-bee-gee-bees"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_162000/162690.stm == Demos on Japanese telly?!?!? == From: http://www.scene-central.com/news/atari/ Japanese NIPPON TV introducing the european demoscene to 2 million viewers! The japanese NIPPON TV is going to make a video of outstanding examples how the european demoscene looks like. If you think your work (demos, pics, musics, screenshots, magazines, etc) is worth to be shown in a video to two million viewers, then send an email to the Director Shigeo Kusama. Please only email the url where to download the file and introduce your work (you/group/datefrom/etc)... DEADLINE IS 07/SEPTEMBER/98 Related Url: mailto:s-kusama@interlink.or.jp So, hopefully Japanese viewers will soon be seeing our Airdirt demo!!!!! == Erm, not quite the Diana tribute you might be expecting!!! == Well, everyone's going on about Diana this week, so we might as well do something for this "one year on..." tribute thingy!!!! Anyway, this is an "interesting" re-write of "Candle in the Wind '98" that was was done right after the funeral... Apparently the webite suddenly went down afterwards for a short time..... (Warning!!! This is definately going to be offensive to some!!! Apparently you're also supposed to turn cookies off...) http://www.godhatesfags.com/harlot.html And how about this for an interesting "Church newsletter"?!?!?! Hmmm, I'd like to see what would happen if someone were to print out a few copies and put it in their local church in place of their normal newsletters!??!?!?! http://www.godhatesfags.com/requiem.gif BTW the reason I said turn off cookies was that the above two pages aren't actually someone's idea of a joke!!!! The bloke behind it is a "Revererd" type person in the US who is apparently a bit of a right-wing extremist who pickets people's funerals, sends off invective filled faxes about people he doesn't like to newspapers, and acts generally like an all-round not-very-nice person!!! You might have noticed the very "subtle" URLs above, but according to the links in the page below, there aren't very much people that he doesn't hate!!! (Expect maybe right-wing nazis!!!!) http://members.tripod.com/~fredphelps/ == Ant & Dec in decent TV shock?!?! == Well, you might be fuming over that Ant & Dec show replacing the Chart Show on saturday mornings- but there's one bright spark in the gloom!!!! The hilariously titled "SMTV://Live" will include the very first terrestrial TV broadcast of the brilliant cartoon "Cow & Chicken"!!!!!!!! This is great!!! If they can get away with putting "Cow & Chicken" (Which is only slightly more gross than "Ren & Stimpy"!!!) on in the mornings, then it won't be long before the other brilliant Cartoon Network creations such as "Dexters Lab" and "Johnny Bravo" come along to grace our screens!!!! On the other hand, if all the parents start complaining, it may be the only chance you get to see it on terrestrial TV!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END!!!!! ... For now!!! This text and stuff is (c) 1998 HOUSE OF SENIOR DADS ,