ISSUE 3 - RELEASED 24/07/1998 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/3.mid ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ISSUE 3 (24/07/1998) "http://www.whitehouse.com/ is actually a porn site!!!" Written by: Old Fart!!! of the SD!!! Contributors: Colostomy Bag!! of the SD!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The mailing list works!!!!! Only one prob- it's very very sllloooowww!!!!! By the time you'll read this, it'll probably be Saturday or something!!! I'm getting a little proggy together that might speed up the mailing, so by next week, I might have some interesting news for you readers!!! I'm also testing the new(er) look, and it'll hopefully be ready by the next issue as well!!! So, you'd better hold onto your seats next weekend after next weekend, and keep the heart pills at the ready!!!! Er, BTW, when I say "next weekend after next weekend", I mean it!! I'm having a little mini holiday from Wed 29 Jul - Sat 1 Aug, so no issue then because I'll not have collected enough guff for anything apart from a very very tiny issue!!! So next issue is probably out on Aug 7/8th!!! See you then!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ . == Virgin on the ridiculous!!!!!! (DOH!!!) == The "Our First Time" site (As seen as in Issue 2) suddenly disappeared on Saturday as apparently their ISP pulled the plug on it!!! Then it re-appeared later in the day on a different ISP!!! According to the original ISP hoster, the site's a hoax!!! (Wow, that was a bit hard to guess, wasn't it!??!) Apparently the man behind the site was intending to charge viewers 5 dollars to view, and then "Mike" and "Diane" would decide *not* to do it!!!! Apparently this was a plot to annoy the hell (!!!) out of religious fundy types and say something about safe sex and make money all at the same time!!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13816.html But it gets better!!! As soon as the "new" site went up, it was broken into by a hacker called "MagicFX", who deleted the entire site, and replaced it with a slaggy message to the man behind it!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13831.html Earlier this week "Mike" and "Diane" came forth from the shadows to reveal themselves as Ty Taylor, a 23 yo actor, and Michelle Parma (of unspecified age!!) who's appeared in some MTV show or something, and guess wot!!! They're neither 18 or virgins!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13904.html == Obfuscate your self in Perl!! == Now if this isn't geeky, I dunno what is!!! There's an online compy to "determine who can write the most devious, inhuman, disgusting, amusing, amazing, and bizarre Perl code"!!!! http://www.tpj.com/tpj/obfusc-3/ == Biggy Euro Network launched!!! == If you're a business bod in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Frankfurt, you can use one of the biggest fibreoptic networks (about 2000 miles worth!!) which has been opened today by WoldCom!!! http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?980720.enworldcom.htm == Rave on to tha hardcore beatz daddio!!!! == Looks like Macromedia are really pushing out the boat on publicising their prods!!!! They've just started a Shockwave powered site called "ShockRAVE"!!! It also uses Real Audio as well, so who know how much those Real dudes and Microsoft are paying as well!!! It's not just gimmicky display site either- there's like real actual dance music bands playing on it as well!!! One major problem i'm finding with it tho, is that for some wacky reason, they're pumping out the sound at a really loud volume and hurting my poor eardrums!!! http://www.shockrave.com/ == Naughty Scottish maggy on tha Webby!!! (Or not- so far anyway!!!) == Erm, there's supposed to be some satirical magazine from Scotland called "Scotland The Raw"!! Only prob, I can't find the flippin thing yet!!! There's two URLs I've seen for this thingy, but they don't really lead anywhere!!! Maybe they will soon, I heard of it on Sunday, which is before the first issue is supposed to go out!!! But ATM it isn't out!!! And I don't know when it's out!!!!! Erm!!! BTW When I heard of it on Sunday, it was courtesy of an interview with it's editor in a Sunday broadsheet- it's online at http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/98/07/19/stiecoeco03003.html?1334425 !!!! And that's without an issue!!! Senior Citizen has already released released 3 issues- the broadsheets really ought to be beating a path to our doors!!!! http://www.gamerush.com/str/fronts.htm - This appears to be just an advert for the thingy plus an addr to subscribe to (presumably an ASCII versh), but I hope the finished product doesn't look like that!! Especially since, according to the interview, the editor is a " co-partner in a web design and game design agency"!!! http://www.scotlandtheraw.com - ATM this has some message along the lines of "This domain name has been registered!!!" and then some ad that reads like one of those Make Money Fast ads!!! Update (24/7/98)- It's still not appeared, but now there's a little message on the first link saying "Late transmition to allow the competition to exhaust themselves !" I hope they're not exhausted even before they begin!!! == Say hello to Wireless Andrew!!! (And Hyperwave!!) == Who's this funny bloke?!?! Well, it's not really a who but a what!!! It's actually a wireless local area network being developed by Carnegie Mellon Uni!!! Apparently, the network is set up a bit like a cellphone type network, and can handle 2 megabits of data a sec!!! Now, that would be a pretty impressive network to connect your little palm computer to!!! The name "Wireless Andrew" apparently refers to Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, who, yup!, founded Carnegie Mello uni!!! http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/index_science_and_technology.html Also on tha wireless tip are Hyperwave, who are doing wirless networks for small businesses... http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/980721/ca_slipnet_1.html == Shooting yourself in the foot?!?! == You know those Wal-Mart dudes!?!? You know, the ones that edit the Prodigy albums of all the naughty words because it might harm people and instead stock nice wholesome family things like guns!!! Well, looks like they've shot themselves in the foot!!! One shop sold guns to a couple of teenagers, who used it in a robbery and killed someone!!! The person's widow then sued sucessfully Walmart for selling the teenagers the guns!!! http://cnn.com/US/9807/19/briefs/ammunition.sales.ap/index.html == Is your bot hot enough for this spot?!?!? == Botspot!!!! Is a new newsletter for bots and intelligent agents!! Well, obviously humans read it, not the bots!!!! Doh!!! http://botspot.com/ == Very nice e-zine list!!!! == Actually I found the above newsletter in John Labovitz's e-zine-list, which, contains loads of links to various e-zines, some really very strange!!! (eg "The Daily Lung", which is a newsletter about lung disease!!) So, it's not all boring pretentious "post-modern" "counter-culture" "arts" "journals", man!!!!!!! http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/ == Stingy people read this!!! == If you want to search out free Internet services, there's a special website for it!!! Only prob- how will you access it if you can't afford to pay for your internet access!??!?! http://www.v-soft.cz/free/ == A rival!?!?!? == OK, you probably know by now that this zine is influenced by the likes of Need To Know (http://www.ntk.net/) and various news trolls services, but look at this!!! Another web/email newsletter with links to various web stuffs and various comments. It's called "The Mezzenger", and I don't think it's quite as good as ours, but then I would say that, wouldn't I!??! The style's more like some Amiga/PC style diskmag article, but some of the links are pretty cool, so it's all right really!!! http://www.themezz.com/news == Smile!!! (It ain't Tate & Lyle!!!) == In case you haven't seen this from the SD FAQ yet... If you've got Realaudio (Assuming it hasn't been killed by the Realplayer Killer yet!!!!), you can listen to an album that doesn't exist!!!! Enough tracks have surfaced from the long lost Beach Boys album "Smile" that their fans can now make an educated guess at what the finished album sounds like!!! And yep, someone's put the whole bloody thing online in Realaudio and MP3 format!!! http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~annew/smile/index.htm == Freaky Technology from Aqua-land!!! == Yep, straight outta Denmark comes a Freak technology News!!! OK, it looks like it was designed by a madman, but it's got loadsa info on new software and hardware stuff!!! http://sunsite.auc.dk/FreakTech/ == Easy as pie?!?!? == One example of the wacky stories that the above site covers... Pie Menus!!! They're like normal menus, but circular!!! I can't really see the point of them in replacing normal menus, but stuff like the "colour selection wheel" where it would help to have the thing in a circular shape would benefit from this sort of thing... What next tho?!? Rhomboid menus!?!?! http://catalog.com/hopkins/piemenus/ddj/piemenus.html == Goodbye Gates, hello Ballmer?!?! == Well, after the revelation that Bill Gates might retire in 5 years (See Issue 1), it looks like the no. 2 is MS-land is going to be Steve Ballmer!! so when Gates goes, I can see a lot of satire writers thanking their deities for such a great name for really rude double-entendres!!!! http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0720/21mball.html == What do you call this flippin' decade?!?!? == The writers in CNN-webland are getting in a bit of a strop because we're near the end of the 90s and no-one's yet thought of some catch-all phrase for the entire decade that's stuck!!! Well, looking at some of the "nominations", I'm not too surprised!!! I mean, how about "The Decade of Republicanism and common sense" - Yeah, means quite a lot to people like me in Central Scotland!!! Best of the lot isn't too good either- "Age of Information"- but at least it's a bit nearer the mark!!! Let's try a couple of names ourselves... Erm, the "Netty" Nineties!?!? I heard on a radio prog about there being a "Niagra" of info on the web, so... "Netty Niagra Info Ninties?!?!" Erm, this is a bit difficult!!! http://cnn.com/US/9807/21/naming.the.90s.ap/index.html == Slightly more relevant search thingies!!! (Or is it!??!) == You know how you search for something in a search engine, and you get a whole load of guff back that's completely irrelevant but has the same keywords?!? Well, some company called Direct Hit (http://www.directhit.com/) is working with a few of the search engine to keep track of the sites that people actually select from search results, so that they can keep tabs on what's really relevant to people in search results!! Only prob I can see with that... what if different things are relevant in searches according to which country you come from or the language you speak and so on!?!? If people from the UK are looking for things to rub out pencil marks, they'll type "rubbers" into a search engine, and get condom sites from the US!!! == KGB has changed quite a lot!!!! == If your sending netty stuff to Russia watch out!!! The former KGB dudes are now wanting to watch everything that goes in and out of Russia on the Internet!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/13874.html == Y2K probs get nuked?!??! == They'd better be quick tho!!! Why?!?! Well, how's this for a nightmare scenario then!?!? The Pentagon are a little worried that the Russian nukes early warning system might get a little confused by the coming millenium and shoot their load!!! (ie fire off the nukes, you dirty person!!!!) The Pentagon are thinking of lending a hand... Mind you, I don't know about this "division by zero" problem... I mean, how do you test for an outside missle attack by dividing by the year?!?! http://www.forbes.com/asp/redir.asp?/tool/html/98/jul/0717/feat.htm == '20th century Castles'!!!! == Talking of creaky old Cold War technology, after some of the old US nukes sites were decommissioned, there's quite a few empty missle silos around the place!!! Now they're seeling them as "20th Century Castles"!! http://www.missilebases.com/ == Nasty stuff in your BIOS!!! == Interesting new Win95/98 virus!!! From Taiwan, no less (The new Belgium for virii?!?!), this one is apparently a completely new type of virus, the first since the first Word Basic viruses came out- it can wipe out Flash BIOS data, which of course will turn your PC into a not-very-smart unresponsive box!!!! http://www.avp.com/about/press/062798/body_062798.html == Games for Linux Geeks!!! == We really like Linux at SDHQ. We use it all the time to make up our amazing website and various things like for example this very issue that you're reading!!! So, we're really happy to read about this site for games in Linux!!! http://www.linuxgames.com/ == Where's that flippin' big rock gone?!?! == You know that big meteorite that hit Greenland last year?!?! Well, they've only just found where the bloody thing hit recently!!!! Not exactly "Deep Impact", eh?!?! They're currently going on an expedition to actually go to the spot and check the meteor out or something. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9807/16/meteorite.search/index.html == NT ain't too good in the Navy!!! == The US Navy decided to get some computers in to take over shipboard functions, but one ship ran into a problem when the NT system which it was running on crashed!!! Serves them right for trying to run someone else's system on their machines!!! They really should be doing their own system- I mean the military did their own networking system, and it resulted in the Internet!!! Who knows what kick-ass stuff would result if they tried to make their own system?!?! http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/July13/cov2.htm == Hit da Hut !!!! On da Net!!! == Online too much to make meals!?!?! Why not order some pizza from http://www.orderpizzahut.com/ ?!??! Only one prob- only certain places in the US do it!!! Still, why not try and see if they can deliver it over here?!?! I know I will, because I'm really hungry!!!! == Are Blipverts here already!??! == Remember those blipverts from the "Max Headroom" movie?!?! Well, in the US, they've already got round to the ONE SECOND COMMERCIAL!!! The first on the blocks was a padlock maker called MasterLock!!!! The only prob is that you can't do too much in 1 second, unless you do subliminal stuff, which ain't allowed here or in the US!!! The way they got around the subliminal bit was pretty sneaky tho- they simply used a slightly greater rate of frames in their ad!!! http://www.nypost.com/business/4337.htm == Wowsers!!!! == Yep, it looks like the classic Inspector Gadget is going to be made into a big budget live action Hollywood film starring... erm, Matthew Broderick!!!! And it'll use the usual loadsa action and effects!!!! And not too much of the original cartoon ideas!!! Argh, sounds terrible already!!!! http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/news/980722/9.html == First major MP3 single!?!?!! == While a conference of record industry moguls weren't too keen on the MPEG audio format saying they thought it was only good for music piracy (As opposed cassette tapes?!?!?) and other excuses, one major label has gone right ahead and put a preview MP3 of one of their acts online as a preview promo for the album, which you can order online!!! Well, er come to think of it, isn't that what they call a single!?!? Anyway, don't get too excited it's just some swing band from the US, so if you're into a load wierd guys playing double bass and stuff, don't let me stop you!!! http://content.mp3.com/mp3/visitors/browse/detail518.asp Just in case you're wondering, this is different from the Rialto "Internet" single "Monday Morning 5:19", because although you get it from an Internet site, it's not an MP3, it's just an ordinary single that you buy over the Internet!!! http://www.imvs.com/features/rialto/ == Realtime Rain!!!! == Yep, it might be raining here in sunny Scotland, but it's nice to know it rains a lot in other places, so I'm dead pleased to find out about the The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission website!!! Even more interesting is that when I was last on, they appear to have worked out that El Nino has collapsed and appears to be turning into La Nina!!! So that's the weather buzzword for the next year- La Nina!!! You heard it here first!!!! http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/ == Erm, what do I vote, Mr Computer?!?! == This is really wierd!!! A website has opened up on the eve of the German elections- it asks you a few questions about the issues of the day, and then it adds all the results up, and tells you what politcal views you support!!!! Er, hang on, wouldn't you know that already if you can answer those flippin questions?!?!?! http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/13955.html == Really cool web design tips!!! == I've just seen this site, and I think it's terrific!!!! It's called Bud Uglly Design and it's really smart!!! http://wwwvoice.com/bud/bud.html == Greasy Spoon US-stylee!!! == Well, it's great to see the US have really unhealthy little greasy spoons cafes!!! In fact there's a whole chain of them called "White Castle"!! But as you see when you load the "unofficial" page below, the "burgers" look the exact same as the classic cafe square sausage stuck in a morning roll!!! The guy who does this page must be almost as fat as the dude who does "Ain't It Cool News"!!!! http://www.shadow.net/~colbert/wcmain.html The offical site is here, but I don't think it looks quite as good... http://www.whitecastle.com/ == Portals reach the UK!!! == Argh!!! According to a BBC Annual Report, the Beeb are wanting to update their BBC Online service to go away from just programme details to "to focus on genres and subjects"!!! Yahoo UK are apparently taking this idea as a serious threat- after all if the BBC do this well, then they're a direct competitor to Yahoo UK!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/13871.html While the hype's just starting here, over in the US, the Portal Honeymoon looks as thought it's over!!!! Some web designer are starting to get seriously cheesed off with Portals, and say they might actually slow things down, not speed 'em up!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/13679.html == Robots with big weapons!!!! == Well, if you can get over to San Francisco really quickly, you can go and watch some robots fighting each other!!!! Yep, a couple of decades after all those hippies went all on about love and stuff, you can go to "Robotica", a convention for, erm, fighting robots!!! It takes place at some big shed called "The Cow Palace"!!! I don't think any cows would want to be in it what with those murderous robots around!!!! http://www.clineworks.com/robotica.html == Microsoft not being very nice to it's friend!??! == This is a very strange story!!! One of the head guys from Real Audio demonstrated what appeared to be MS doing the nasty on them!! He installed MS Media Player, and RealPlayer didn't work anymore!! The reason it's strange is that MS has a 10% stake in Real Audio, and some of the technology in the Media player is licenced from Real Audio!!!! http://www.computerworld.com/home/news.nsf/all/9807234realnet Update- It appaears it's really the fault of RealAudio!!! Apparently the RealPlayer doesn't set the Windows Registry properly!!! So Microsoft are completely blameless on this!!! For some reason, when I told one of my anti-MS conspiracy-loving friends this little titbit, he went "Aha!! I thought so!!!" I don't know why he said that tho!!! == Warners Bros TV broken!!! == Some hackers say they've broken into Time Warners TV HQ in Los Angeles, and they'll be able to do terrible things like "move broadcast satellite downlink dishes" (Argh!!) and "send text messages scrolling across home television screens" (Anarchy!!) http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/13838.html == Web Troma!!!! == Troma, the bunch of dudes who do really cheap movies like Class of Nuke 'Em High and Toxic Avenger have now got a little site on tha webby!!! Apparently they're planning to have a live webcast of 4 days worth of the filming schedule of their new prod "Terror Firmer"!!! And you'll be able to send comments to the crew there as well, and they're planning to add some some sort of interactive element to it as well, like deciding what to say etc... Sounds pretty interesting!!! Mind you, getting the online masses as production consultants certainly seems to fit in well with Troma's reputation for being really cheap!!!! http://www.troma.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END!!!!! ... For now!!! This text and stuff is (c) 1998 HOUSE OF SENIOR DADS ,