ISSUE 1 - RELEASED 13/07/1998 Updated: Sat 22 Aug 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! The soundtrack for this issue is available at: http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/music/1.mid ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ISSUE 1 (13/07/1998) "Because we want to!!!!" Written by: Old Fart!!! of the SD!!! Contributors: Er, none yet!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What do you mean it looks a bit crap?!?!?! Look, I've got enough material for a flippin' issue, so I think I'd be better getting out an issue that looks crap ATM but is really brilly in terms of content!!! And I'm working on the look proper anyway!!!! Oh yeah, and hopefully, some sort of mailing thingy as well!!! So don't say I'm not bothering my rear, because I am!!! Look, just read the flippin' thing will you!!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ . == 'Mind Reading' computers!?!?!? == Imagine if a computer a game could see how difficult you're finding the game, and adjust itself!!! Well, the guys at MIT are working on it!!! According to the link below, "researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are working on computers that can "read" a person's mind by monitoring body movements." Unfortunately, being the boring people that they are, they're using it for more serious stuff like "effective tutors" or video recorders that "sense your boredom and fast-forward through the dull parts of a movie", but I'm sure you can see the interesting applications!!! One prob tho- if Windows gets hold of that sort of technology, and reads people reactions to it, I can imagine it becoming really depressed, like a sort of Marvin the Paranoid Android of operating systems!!!! http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/05/caring.computer.ap/ == On the 10th aniversary of Acid House!!! == Who owns the smiley logo?!?!??! Apparently it's some Frenchie guy called Franklin Loufrani who did it in 1968 for publications about the Paris student riots and trademarked it in 1971, but the guy that actually designed first it was an American called Harvey Ball who first did it in 1963 for an insurance company promotion!!!! So it's a bit of a not-so-smiley business going on!!! http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/07/fringe.smiley.face.off/ == Comics!!! == Talking of funny circles with dots for eyes, check out Joe The Circle at http://joe-the-circle.com/comics.html !!!! And how about this for a new hero?!??! Suicide Boy!!! (http://fractalcow.com/suicideboy/ ) == Those Wacky Americans!!! == Nothing like taking things to extremes!!!! Some blokes weren't satisfied flaming with another guy on AOL chatrooms, so a few of them turned up at this guys house and set about him with baseball bats!!! Well, some of the "flames" I've seen on the internet could be summarised in the word "Ug!", so I'm not too surprised some of these crap "flamers" would eventually start using their clubs as well!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13502.html == Saturn buyers have more fun!!! == Well, that's what it says in a survey at http://cnn.com/US/9807/06/carbuyer.turnoffs/index.html Erm!! == Yahoo makes a Yahoo over the Spices not being in Who's Who!!! == http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/story.html?s=z/reuters/980707/news/stories/who_1.html "Prince William is in but the Spice Girls -- biggest pop phenomenon since the Beatles -- have yet to find a place in the International Who's Who." Argh!!!! Call out the Red Cross!!!! I wonder if Who's Who read this little postie I saw in news://alt.conspiracy ?!?! I wouldn't believe it tho!!! I mean it didn't even cause any reaction in news://alt.music.spice-girls when I forwarded it there!!! So it must be false!!! BEGIN TEXT ==================================================== Subject: Geri Halliwell pregnant by Chris Evans From: xxxxxxx Date: 1998/06/04 Message-ID: <01bd8fec$dc7438e0$2a12a8c2@default> Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy My sister saw Geri Halliwell and Chris Evans coming out of a London Maternity Clinic. The rich and famous often go to thgis clinic for pregnancy tests, abortions and anti-natal classes. Geri was photographed coming out of Chris' house last wek, and the photo was printed in the national pres...... I will leave you to rumour why they were at the clinic. END TEXT ======================================================= == Polish dude from Heaven's Gate!! == And you thought Heaven's Gate were a wacky bunch of Yanks that killed themselves because of a comet in the sky!!! Nope!!! There's some Polish server with all the Heaven's Gate guff on it now, and someone (presumably the person behind the server!!) posted a message called "I'm from Heaven's Gate" on news://alt.conspiracy with just the URL for the website!!! So if you hear of some Polish cult killing themselves off, remember where you heard it first!!!! http://www.byd.top.pl/~heaven/ == Another European Heaven's Gate?!?! == Someone's been really pissing off a lot of newsgroups, especially religious and conspiracy ones, by continally posting the Bible a chapter at a time!!!! The posting addrs keep changing, and are usually obvious made-uppies, tho sometimes he appears to be posting from xs4all.nl!! (ie the Netherlands in Europe!!) But last Saturday, it got interesting as the posting addr was the_time_is_near@praise_God.no.domain.specified (nine days and counting) So- at the time of writing, it's 2 days to go to... what?!?!? We'll find out on Monday I suppose!!! That's Monday 13th!!!! (The day after the World Cup Final- hmmm....) (Actually, that's today!!!!) == PC interface thingy for N64 and Playstation!!! == http://www.interact-acc.com/news/dex_drive_release.htm This "Dex Drive" thingy apparently allows you to plug in the memory card of a N64 or Playstation and allows you to read and write from it on a PC, like it was a Zip drive!! Apparently console fans will be able to swap high scores and other things that "will revolutionize console gaming as we know it"!!!! == Watch out for the Girl Gamers!! == This interesting (if a little patronising because "the parents" might be reading it!!!) article talks about how female gamers are getting tough against some of the naughty blokes online!!! http://www.zdnet.com/familypc/content/9806/columns/parental.html == Quick Peek at Disney Dinos Computer Graphics!! == "Ain't It Cool News" has given us a quick peek at what Disney has been doing with their computer graphics!!!! Apparently the pics in the link below come from a film they're working on called "Dinosaurs", and the pics show- Dinosaurs!!! Done in computer graphics!!!! Dunno about that excuse to do with them being in b/w tho!!! http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/980707/1.html == Romero does a new game!!! == John Romero who use to be in ID software, and was involved in in Wolfenstien and Doom and blah de blah, and then left to form his own company called "ION Storm" (Wow!! Great name!!!), has done some new game thingy called "Daikatana". Don't ask me how to pronounce that though!!! In the link below, you can see a piccy of the thingy (Don't look like Wolfy/Doom/Quake at all!!!), and a piccy of some hairy Jeff Minter lookalike!!! http://www.msnbc.com/news/169567.asp == Radiograms for little computers!!! == Awww, now this really warms the cockles of my heart!!! Motorola and the dudes that make the PalmPilot (3Com!!) have got together to offer "wireless messaging" for the little Palm Pilot computers!! You get this "Synapse pager card" thingy, and plug into your compute!! Well, it's a little easier than juggling between a palm computer and a mobile!!! So, how long before we get actual modem thingies?!?!? Who knows?!?! http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/98/114472.html == Repton Returns!!! == Anyone remember the "Dig Dug" clone for the BBC called "Repton"!??! Well, if you've got Linux and QT/KDE, you can relive that experience with "krepton", a versh of Repton 3!!! http://appindex.freshmeat.net/view/899911434/ == Keep taking the Viagra!!! == Hmmm, is this guy being flippin' paid or something?!?! Some US doc is saying that just in case you find it hard to get "it" up, take a Viagra before bed and get "it" up in order that "it" remains in good working order!!!! ">http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/story.html?s=z/reuters/980708/news/stories/viagra_3.html == Move over Jupiter!!! == Some French astronomers have found a planet roughly 3 times the size of Jupiter about 60 light years away form here!! It's called "Gliese 614", but I've decided it should really be called "Big Blob" because it's really big and like Jupiter it's a big blob of soft stuff!!! http://www.physci.psu.edu/~mamajek/exo.html#14Her == Taking Battle re-enactment a bit too far?!?!? == The French are in the news quite a lot this week!!! One French guy took part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg, and accidentely used real bullets, wounding one person!!! http://www.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/056563.htm == World Cup Virus!! == Oh yeah, the French did reasonably well too here I gather... Anyway, if you were sick of the World Cup, you'll be even sicker if you use MS Word!!! "W97M/WorldCup98" is another variation of the world's most popular strain of virus, MS Word Basic Macro Viruses!! This one apparently will add a couple of lines to your autoexec.bat to format your HD on the day of the World Cup final!!! Even wackier, on the day, a dialog appears asking what team you support, and if you pick one the virus writers like, you get a congratulations message!!! (It still does the dirty though!!!) http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/06/worldcupvirus.idg/index.html == Realplayer Killer!!!! == Apparently Real Player, that spiffy little audio/visual player thingy doesn't check certain things about the incoming stream, so you can write a proggy on a webserver to pretend to be a "real" stream, and completely lock up someone's Real Player app!!! http://www.rootshell.com/archive-j457nxiqi3gq59dv/199807/rpk.c.html == ZX Shrink Chamber!!! == Well, I think it's funny!!! Apparently the guys behind "Independence Day" are wanting to put the "President" character from there into an "Incredible Journey" remake!!! The heroes of the film get shrunk in "ZX Shrink Chamber"!!!!! (Actually, it looks like this rumour is a load of crap, but I still like the idea of a ZX Shrink Chamber!!!) http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/980708/6.html == Write your own crap story!!! == This is certainly giving us a few ideas for our "Killer Nut" section!! There are now a couple of "write your own adventure story" sites- you remember those "do your own thing" type books where you came to some conundrum at the end of one page and you've got to turn to page xx according to what decision you make and so on?!?!? Well, it's pretty easy to do on the web!!! And now they can be self writing!!! On the one below if you get to the end of a path, you can add your own bit and choices to it!!! http://www.snoot.com/cgi-bin/binary.cgi == Moby Dick predicts the future!!!! == OK, this is an old one, but I was reminded of it in this months Fortean Times... You've probably heard of that book "The Bible Code" by Michael Drosnin, where he says the Bible predicts this, that, and everything else inbetween!!! Now, some people think it's just chance that certain letters equally spaced between each other just happen to make well known names and stuff!!! In his defence Drosnin said "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them". This is a reference to the claim that the assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin was predicted in the Bible!!! Well, someone's taken him up on it!!!! And they've found loadsa people in Moby Dick, including Yitzhak Rabin, who were assassinated after the book was published!!! http://www.negia.net/~skepticx/Moby-Dick-Code.htm == Bill Gates considers retiring!!! == According to the link below Mr Microsft might consider retiring in about 5 years!!! Who will be able to fill his place?!?!?! http://www.newslinx.com/News/cg-070998c.html == Desktop Friendly demos!! == It seems that the latest challenge in demos, after the craze earlier in the year for 128 byte demos (Check ours out!!!) is system friendly demos!!! The Black Lotus have already done a Windows 95 demo and now some guys on our favourite platform have done an Atari GEM demo!! You'll need an 68030 Atari with 16bit graphics (eg a Faclon!!) to run it though!!! What's really interesting about this one is that the crew are working on a third party module format so that others can slot in their own demo modules!!! See http://wombat.ludvika.se/gemdemo/ == The Teletext Experience!!!! == Courtesty of someone on news://alt.digitiser, I've found a page with some convincing looking teletext GFX!!! Yep, experience the world of 8 colour 80x75 graficks on your 1280x720 24 bit display!!!! http://members.xoom.com/zygotes/text/ == MP3 for Free?!?! == There's a new MP3 player just getting underway called "FreeAMP"- Yep, that's right!!! It's "Free", because it's GPLed. If you dunno what that means, it just means you get the source code with it!!! This is how they usually do things in the world of Unix, but this proggy is done for Windows as well as Unix/Linux!!! At the moment, it's still in a very early stage- there ain't no binary versions, so you have to have the right tools to compile it for Windows!! But since you get the right tools supplied with Linux as standard, it should be no prob there!!! Anyway, it's worth keeping an eye on- hopefully when my WinAmp player has run out, they'll have done a binary version!!!! http://www.freeamp.org/ == We get slagged off in Undercover 12!!! == Great!!! Our "Monomental" demo really gets a slagging in the lastest issue of Undercover, the Atari diskmag!!! It seems that Moondog has decided not to like our demos after all!!! Ah well, we couldn't get brilliant reviews all our lives!!! Actually, Moondog suddenly seems to be against all "fake" demos- why he's included us in it we don't know since we're art terrorist multimedia gurus, not a "fake demo" crew!! Mind you, the poor bloke seems to be negative these days about everything!!!! Anyway, have a look at UCM12- it's at http://wombat.ludvika.se/ae/dhs_files/misc/ucm12.lzh It's an Atari prog, but PC dads can run it under Pacifist!!! (we run it under v0.44) You'll probably need anti-depressant drugs after reading it tho!! You can get Pacifist from http://www.pacifist.fatal-design.com/ . You can also run our "Monomental" demo in Pacifist (Put it in hi-res mode!!)!!! Get the demo from http://seniordads.home.ml.org/demos/mono/mono.html and decide for yourself!!!! == Silly Posty of the week!!! == BEGIN TEXT ==================================================== From: Particleboard@tinlc.org Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email Scientists this week decoded the first confirmed alien transmission from outer space. Here is the text of the message that they decoded: "THIS REALLY WORKS!!!!!!!!! Just send 5*10*50 atoms of hydrogen to each of the five star systems listed below. Then, add your own system to the top of the list, delete the system at the bottom, and send out copies of this message to 100 other solar systems. If you follow these instructions, within 0.25 of a galactic rotation you are guaranteed to receive enough hydrogen in return to power your civilization until entropy reaches its maximum!" END TEXT ======================================================= ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END!!!!! ... For now!!! This text and stuff is (c) 1998 HOUSE OF SENIOR DADS ,