ISSUE 2 - RELEASED 18/07/1998 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/2.mid ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ISSUE 2 (18/07/1998) "'Cuban Boy' is really Noel Gallagher & Paul Weller!!!" Written by: Old Fart!!! of the SD!!! Contributors: Colostomy Bag!! of the SD!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well, some of you managed to come here for the first issue anyway!!! But there's this "when is it going to be done as a mailing list"??!?! stuff!!! Look, I'm flipping doing that so shut up!!! Anyway, I've set up a little mailing list for discussion and stuff. You can log onto here, but just in case some thing funny happens, here's the hard way to do it!!!! Go to http://www.coollist.com/ , and goto the little bitty which says subscribe to a mailing list, put "seniornetzien" in the list name, and then put your email addr in the email field (well, er, I think so!!!)!!! Anyway, my main acheievment this week is to totally abstract the story and issue format to hell, and stuck all the stories in a database, so I just need to run a couple of proggies and hey presto- fully formed issues of Senior Citizen!!! Now I just need to plug in a new look... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ . == Bill Gates sponsors wages bill!!! == Well, we might be having all this nice Social Chapter protections and stuff here in Europe, but in the US... "Microsoft advocates enactment of a tax bill by October which would permit any employer to deprive any full-time, permanent employee of any employee benefit, according to David Stobaugh" Who this guy?!??! Well, he successfully fought a lawsuit on behalf of some MS full-time employees who didn't get treated as proper full-timers because they were put on the temp staff roll!! So MS is apparently trying to make their policy the law, so they can't get done!!!! Is this the first time MS have tried to "embrace and extend" the law?!?! http://www.gagames.com/news/bits/6+9+98/16:36:12.html == To boldly go where no HTML has gone before!!! == Goodbye HTTP, hello HTTP-NG!! Yes, the "Next Generation" of webserver dynamics is here!! OK, I can see you're falling asleep already, but it means spiffy new things at the webuser end!!! Like, foreign language versions of your pages!!! (OK, you need to translate yourself, the the web server can tell the difference!!) And some brilly transmission protocol called SMUX which speeds up stuff!!! Er, actually I dunno what I'm talking about here, but it sounds good anyway!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,24103,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.k == Wrong sort of Nets?!?! == "We only catch the dumb ones." Who was that? A fisherman trying to catch a shoal of really intelligent fish!?!? Nope!!! It was a US spokesman talking about catching hackers in their systems!!! http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctd092.htm == What is Everything!??! == This is a very strange site!!!! I don't know what to make of it!!! It loos like some wierd sort of bizzare self-assembling database of something but I still don't quite know what the hells going on!! Guess it's a bit too brainy for me!!!!! http://everything.slashdot.org/ == Estimate your chances of murder!!!! == Well, in the capital of Country music anyway!! Thanks to Metropolitan Nashville Police Department you can now find out your chances of getting murdered!!! Just answer a few questions on a questinnaire, and it'll give you a nice percentage score on how likely it is to happen!!! The stats are probably a bit crap really, but I'm sure the Tourist Board are really pleased!!!! http://www.nashville.net/~police/risk/murder.html == Viagra mk 2!??! == It looks like there's a competitor to Viagra!!! Oh no, another flippin' wierd name to learn that will be used all the time... http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/story.html?s=z/reuters/980715/news/stories/impotence_1.html Though they'd better be quick because some bloke is suing the Viagra dudes. He says it gave him a heart attack!!! "No one needs to improve their sex life to die for it. I'm very fearful of having another heart attack. I regret I ever heard of it"!!!! http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/top_stories/story.html?s=z/reuters/980716/news/stories/viagra_1.html == Calculator of Death!!! == Er, I dunno what to make of this!!! http://members.tripod.com/~underdark/calc.html == Deja FTP?!?! == Searching in wacky newsgroups is pretty cool isn't it?!? So how about searching for wacky files?!?! Now there's Deja News equivalents for files!!!! http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/ == Encyclopaedia Yahoo!!! == Encyclopaedia Britannica have exploded onto the Internet!!! They've obviously said "Right!!! These young whippersnappers are using this webby thingy, and not reading too much of our paper stuff!!! Let's do some really original and spiffy website that they'll take notice of!!!" So they've done a web directory thingy like Yahoo, only it's a bit more serious!!! Oh yeah, they've called it "eBlast"!!! Wow!!! http://www.eblast.com/ == First time on the web!??!?! == Like "Killer Net" said, you can get loads of pictures of people "doing it" on the web!!! And here's a website where people will "do it" for the first time!!!! Yep, "Diane" and "Mike" are going to be the people "doing it"!!! It's not a porn thing tho!!!!! "We're going to do this as tastefully as possible" the organisers say... But as the "Netly News" says, it's got the following keywords in it's meta tags: "sex, teen, virgin, virginity, obscene, taboo, Live, student, condom, condomania, safe, deviant, purient, nude, minister, church, voyeur, forbidden, tasteless, gross, naked." !!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13716.html http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/0,2326,201980715-14037,00.html == Hackers to protest against bad publicity!!! == Miramax piccys are doing a film version of the book "Takedown", which was done by this security guy who caught a hacker!!! So obviously a bit of an unbiased account there!!! So a lot of people, including the editor guy of 2600, are a bit annoyed, especially since they claim a lot the events are made-uppies!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13712.html == Teensy camera!!! == Lucent Technologies have managed to squeeze an imaging system and video circuitry into a single chip - just add lens and connect a video recorder!!! This means really teensy camera just like in "Killer Net"!!! Obviously some people are a bit worried about the spying possiblities of marble-size cameras!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/13740.html == Yet more mini thingies!!! == Apparently the technology to build atom sized computer is being worked on!! Some bloke called "van der Weide" is looking to build a "better molecule" with his spiffy new spectrometer!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/13759.html == Play with your lego!!! == You thought all that Lego business was stuff you left behind when you got a computer?!?!? Wrong!!! Lego are about to lauch "Mindstorm"- in other words, robotic Lego, which can interface with your compute!!! Interestingly enough, they're looking for beta-testers!!! Unfortunately, the application form requires you to specify what US state you come from!!! So I put my full addr with country and so on, and selected Wyoming for the state!!! So anyone from outside the US, I recommend you select "Wyoming" as a sort of code-word for "If it's US only, why the feck did you put the form on the Internet?!?!?!" http://www.legomindstorms.com/ == Willy Wonky rumours!!! == There's been a few funny rumours about this one!!! There's rumours going on about a film based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!!! Yes, I know there's already one form the 70s, but that was rubbish! :) Apparently it's from Warners, and the original rumours spoke of a live version with Michael Jackson in it!!! But apparently it's actually going to be a big cartoon. In the link below, apparently the film will be a bit "darker" than the older film, which probably means that it's a bit more like the original Roald Dahl book!! http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/980716/7.html == Tongue Scraping!!! == Apparently, this is all the rage in the US for getting rid of bad breath!!!! You get a special tongue scraping implement, and.... You get the picture!!!! Yuck!! http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/15/fringe.tongue.scraper/ == Do your own crap TV prog!!! == Hmmm, someones decided to do a write your own story in video form!!! "Participants will watch and interact with digitally animated stories, choosing multiple plot alternatives that lead to distinctly different conclusions." Shame it's only for Geocities bods!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13787.html == Mozart's Musikalisches Würfelspiel!!! == Don't worry, I wasn't having a heart attack there!!!!!!! It's actually German!!!! It's actually an interactive "Musical Dice Game" done by Mozart in the olden days!!! Apparently you rolled the dice a few times, and a beautiful minuet would pop out!!! Now someone's done it on their compute, and you can hear the minuet on a MIDI player!! In fact, if you're reading this on the webpage, then you've probably heard one of the examples!!! If you were wondering why this page was sounding like a Discovery Channel documentary on the Rennaisence, now you know!!!! But if you don't have the plugin, you'll wonder what the hell I'm talking about!!! http://204.96.11.210/jchuang/Music/Mozart/mozart.cgi == Crappy Lampy on tha webby!! == There's some compy on the web to find the worst looking lamp ever!!! I like the current winner, the WW2 "Bomb" lamp!!! It reminds me of my old days... "We'll Meet Again..." etc !!!! http://findgreatstuff.simplenet.com/uglylamp.html == First there were floppy disks, now... Floppy screens!! == If I said "LCD screen", you'd think of a little digital watch or calcy wouldn't you?!?!?! Well, how about this- an LCD screen that's about as thick as a thick page in a book!!! That's what "Gyricon" is!!! The dudes in Xerox labs (you know the guys that invented WIMP and stuff!!) are thinking in terms of electronic books, newspapers, wallpaper and so on!! And they not settling for blocky displays either!!! They're aiming for 400-600dpi which is the same resolution as a laser printer!!! http://www.ingersoll-rand.com/compair/oct_nov_97/octnovco/oct_nov/pag_1.htm == Deja Views?!?!? == Some spiffy new file format has been developed by AT&T!!! It's called "DjVu" (????) and has file compression ratios as high as 1000:1!!! You can get a plugin for your browsy-wowsey to view the piccies!!! http://djvu.research.att.com/ == Pack shot part 2!!! == Looks like there's going to be a sequel to the Full Monty!!! http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/980717/5.html == Lycos: Wa ain't no portal, honest guv!!!! == If you've been reading US web news, you'll probably be flippin sick of hearing about "portals"!!!! If you don't know already (Don't worry, they'll be going on about it over here in the UK pretty soon!!!), portals are basically web-guides with big front pages with lots of subject intrest headings, which have lots of little sub-headings and so on... The best example I can think of is the front page of http://www.yahoo.com/ Well, now that virtually every search engine and ISP in the US has a "portal", companies are now trying to pretend that they're not at all the same as everyone else!!! And first up is Lycos, who now deny that they're a portal- apparently the magic word is now "hub"!!!! http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0,3441,2120572,00.html == Kentucky Fried Reverends!! == (Sorry!!!) Kentucky just passed a law which allows the clergy to pack a pistol (A gun, you dirty so-and-so!!!!) in church as long as they've got a concealed-weapons permit!!! Wow!!! The congregations must get pretty rowdy in Kentucky!!! Not all the church dudes are happy though. One said: "Jesus would puke." !!!!!!!!!! (Look, I don't make these quotes up you know!!!!) http://cnn.com/US/9807/16/briefs.pm/holy.heat.ap/index.html == Digi really scrapes barrel!!! == I've just seen the debut of "Smilin' Peter The Happiest Chicken" on UK Teletext p171 today (18/7/98) on the UK games videotext mag Digitiser!! It's not really very good is it?!?! I mean this "character" seems to be happy all the time about everything and uses loads of exclamation marks!!!!!! And what with the refererences to his arthritec limbs, he sounds like a right old fart!!! http://x2.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=358803827&CONTEXT=900716982.1454964927&hitnum=2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END!!!!! ... For now!!! This text and stuff is (c) 1998 HOUSE OF SENIOR DADS ,