ISSUE 9 - RELEASED 12/04/1998 Updated: 12/04/1998 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/9.mid ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ISSUE 9 (12/04/1998) "Grelb is dead!!!!!" Written by: Old Fart!!! of the SD!!! Contributors: Colostomy Bag!! of the SD!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some of the people on the mailing list might know about this already, but for the benefit of everyone else, it's been a bit of an exciting week for the Senior Dads website- or rather the server the website is sitting on!!! By the time you're reading this, the Grelb server, which has housed the Senior Dads webpages since 1995 may be out of service, and our pages may be on a completely different server!!! Of course, if you're reading this on the website, you'll know if the pages are still on Grelb or not, but they're going to be off the Grelb server by the end of the month anyway!!! This sudden move is not being made by us, but by the people who run Grelb, and the reason is academic politics!!!! As some of you might have noticed, the Grelb server was situated in the Glasgow Uni domain- this was because it was started up as a little project by Glasgow Uni students, including one of our friends, who maintains the SD site!!! Since then, nearly all the students have left Uni... Now there's pretty strict guidelines on use of facilities on the JANET network, so obviously sooner or later questions would be asked about the Grelb site, which was mostly used by non-students and had a lot of "third-party" pages (eg our site!!!)!!!! So just in time for the new term, the dudes at Grelb have decided to shut down Grelb, and relocate it to another machine outside JANET!!! This is supposed to happen on the very day this issue is released, but if it doesn't, it'll happen eventually anyway by the end of the month!!!! Grelb users have been warned that the new machine will have a lower bandwith connection, and that it's only really medium-term, so we might have to look for a new site ourselves anyway!!! (Anyone know of any site which allows CGI progs and server-side includes?!?!?!?) RIP Grelb 1993-1998 : We'll really miss you!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ == Phantom porn on Lords website!!! == Looks like a certain infamous recent debate in the House of Lords has weighed heavily on the consciences on some of the priveledged senior citizens!!!! One Lord speaking on a compeletely different subject started off his speech by complaining that someone had broken into the House of Lords website and put some "disgusting" porno piccies on it!!!! Only one problem tho- no-one else noticed any "naughty" stuff on the website before or after he said anything!!!! Hmmm, well, obviously he wouldn't be mixing his bookmarks up or anything like that, so maybe there's a porno "soundalike" equivalent for the House of Lords, a bit like http://www/whitehouse.com/ !!!!! http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/090498/info6_11005_noframes.html == Negativland not so negativ now!!! == Well, the problems between sample combo Negativland and the record industry (See issue 8...) seems to be fixed now, and it's actually a bit of a revolutionary settlement!!! As reported last week, Negativland found that their new album wasn't getting pressed by CD plants, apparently on the orders of the Recording Industry Association of America, because of all their sampling!!! Now the industry have reached a sort of agreement about the "grey areas" of using samples of other peoples songs in original compositions... Although this idea has been kind of understood for years, this is actually the first time it has been recognised officially by a record industry body!!! So this is actually a rather important decision, which will fundamentally affect the various copyright issues around sampling!!!! Well done, Negativland!!!! http://rl.sonicnet.com/news/archive/story.jhtml;$sessionid$WAK5TTAAABXMHUID1AKCFEQ?id=500942&pid=502275 Negativland's lovely little website is at http://www.negativland.com/ ... And it's got that track that they're "famous" for- the one which borrows from "U2"- in MP3 format!!!!!! == Quake- the text version!!!! == Quite a lot of friends I know are getting into this Linux lark, and putting it on their old PC boxes they made out of 2 year-old PC parts!!! But they've not exactly been spoilt for super-duper games!!!! Until now, that is!!!! Now you can get Quake- in ASCII form!!!!! Yes, that's right, Quake, with all the GFX drawn on a text window!!!! Apparently you need to compile some text rendering library with it, but apart from that, go to the URL below, and get one of the best games ever released!!!! http://webpages.mr.net/bobz/ttyquake/ == Old Fart in adventure terms!!!! == While you're running Quake in VIC-20 style GFX, you might be in the mood for another retro game!!! Well, how about the very first adventure!??!!? Back in the days before you had to shoot at loads of people in 3d-texture-shaded-funged-virtual-reality engine thingies with big names like "Messiah" and "Bigger than Jesus" and so on, adventures were like really complex books with no pictures, expect that it was often very hard to turn the page!!!! Most of the actual coding in these adventures went into super-duper command line programs that tried to understand what the user was typing, and how to carefully steer the user into typing only a couple of possible things so that they didn't have to code an artificial intelligence algorithm, which might not fit too well in a proggy for a 16K Speccy!!!!!! Anyway, someone's done the very first adventure ever (Done in the days when they always played Kraftwerk every time there was something computery on the telly!!!) on tha megamighty webby inpho-pipe!!! Yay!! http://www-tjw.stanford.edu/adventure/ == They wouldn't be welcome at a Quantum Las Vegas?!?!?! == Well, someone might have found why God "plays dice" (See issue 7...) but us mere mortals are now working out how to cheat a little!!! There's always been a little problem with making computers smaller and smaller- at some point, it's going to be small enough that atoms at the quantum level are going to add loadsa errors!!! Well, now some clever people have invented ... quantum error correction!!!! So now we'll be able to build computers even smaller!!! http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/1998/physnews.388.htm == Microdrives II!!! (They're back!!! And this time, they're ANGRY!!!) == Even without quantum cleverness, technology's getting pretty tiny anyway!!! For example, remember those little boxes of plastic stringy stuff that you used on Sinclair computers (eg the Speccy and QL) because it was faster than tape but not quite as expensive as a hard disk?!?!?! (Ahh, memories!!! "Wouldn't it be lovely if I could afford a 'Winchester' drive with THREE WHOLE MEGABYTES in it!??!?!?!") Well, Microdrives are back, but not courtesy of Sinclair Research, but old "Big Blue", who are of course IBM, not a porno website as you may be thinking!!!!! And unlike the Speccy Microdrive Class of 1981, it's not under a megabyte of magnetic coated plastic stringy stuff, it's actually a little hard drive with a capactity of 340MB!!!! It's also a little bit smaller- about 1 inch square!!!! So a "Comm badge" with built-in "Universal Translator" doesn't look too far away, does it?!?!?! http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/micro/ == Say hello to our new reader- the FBI!!!! == Monica Lewinsky!!! Kenneth Star!!!! President Clinton!!! Iraqi chemical weapons!!! Osama Bin Laden!!!! Sorry about that folks, but I'm just increasing our readership there!!!! After the news about the NSA having super-duper hardware and software to monitor email going in and out of the US for special "key" phrases, (See issue 6...) it looks like the FBI are getting together a similar little system of their own!!!! So there you are!!!! As well as all the link exchange schemes, submissions to search engines, you can increase readership of your website by alluding to "naughty" things!!!! I expect the UK secret services must have their equivalent... Erm, Tony Blair in sex orgy?!?!?! (I don't think they'll be fooled by that one, perhaps!!!!) http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/cda/index/0,2073,2134763-2103615,00.html == Scientest to clone himself!!!! == Remember that film "The Boys from Brazil"!??! Wasn't a stupid name?!?!? I mean, it was about some plot by Josef Mengeles to clone loadsa Hitlers, it wasn't about blokes from Brazil because they were actually all German!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I was vaguely reminded of the film when I read this story about this genetic doctor bloke from Chicago. Not that he's a Nazi who experimented on living humans in a Nazi death camp or anything like that, he's just wanting to clone himself!!! His wife is to carry the cloned embryo!!!!! http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/090698/healtht_12144.html == The Internet might make you really depressed now!!!! == If you're not got depression from Internet usage as reported in that "HomeNet" survey, (See issue 8...) then you're probably going to get really depressed at the reaction to it over the past week, which has generally been either "No, we're not!!!!" or the sort of somophoric bollox that I last saw when I first came on the Internet in the early 90s, and it was dominated by "Age of Aquarius" type tracts from ageing hippy types based on The Well!!! Probably the best article of the week was from Salon, who at least still have the "media" articles that Hotwired used to have!!! (See issue 8...) Their story pokes quite a few holes in statistics of the HomeNet study, including pointing out (As I did last week!!!!) that the actual figures are pretty trifling anyway!!!! http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/rose/1998/09/03straight.html More discussion of the whole thing.... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/tech1.htm Then someone let the bloody philosofers in on the act!!!!! http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/090598/info8_14386_noframes.html == Message to the hackers- thanks!!!!! == Check out this page!!!! Yes, you are reading it right, they are thanking the people who hacked into their site!!!!! Well, it's certainly what I would call an "open" security policy!!!! http://www.freeshells.net/freeshells/hack.htm == Babylon now Babel!! == Just as well I didn't tell that "Linux Babylon" story (See issue 8...) this week, as it wouldn't have been so funny!!!!!!! That's because it turns out that the makers of the game dev system for Linux have discovered that someone already has used the name "Babylon"!!! They're now changing their name to "Babel", and they've also changed their homepage!!!! However, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone's already used "Babel"... I mean, we're talking about something that suggests either "Tower of Babel" (Which was a rather good little game in the early 90s for the Atari ST!!!) or the "Babel-fish" in the "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy"!!! (Which also was used recently by AltaVista- see http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/ ) So, not really too much room for manouvere there!!!! Let's hope they find some name to settle down with, as their actual idea is pretty neat anyway!!! http://celsius-software.hypermart.net/babel/ == What's in a name- well, this crowd!!! == Our suggestion to the "Babel" dudes... Have a look at this site!!!! Name Stormers are an actual company solely devoted making up names and slogans!!!! You can actually download software from their website to make up silly names for your company or products!!! And they've got a consultancy!!! Just get an idea of how brilliant these guys are, take a look at these brilliant ideas we found on their website!!!! * "NO IF'S, ANTS OR BUGS ABOUT IT." ... DALLAS PEST & TERMITE SERVICES * "FOX FOUNDATIONS - REPAIRS FOR THE SINKING MAN." * "FOR THE POWDER AND THE GLORY" ... A COLORADO SKI RESORT * "LEVY ALL THE PLUMBING TO US." ... LEVY & SON COMPANY * "TO EACH HIS PHONE." ... PROMO FOR NEW POCKET PHONE Wow!!! Saatchi & er, ... Well, the other Saatchi left recently, didn't he?!?! Erm, anyway, Saatchi & Whoever-The-Hell-It-Is-Now better watch out!!!!!! http://www.namestormers.com/ == That missing 'Save' function in RealAudio!!! == As you might have read before, (See issue 4...) Linux users have means to record proprietary sound formats... But some Windows users might be saying "Why should Linux users have all the fun!??!?!?" Well, lucky Windows users, you now have the chance to record copyrighted proprietary RealAudio streams using some proggy called X-Get!!!! And it's a legit proggy as well!!! (Well, it's been reviewed by some guy from ZD-net, so it must be legit!!!!!) http://2bsystem-usa.www-hosting.net/X-FileGet/index.htm Mind you, it's still in a RealAudio format!!!!! Well, we can fix that!!!!!! Here's a little proggy which converts RealAudio to WAV files, which can be converted into any old format!!!!! http://www.2bsys.com/Ra2Wav/index.htm == MUNG II!!!!! == One of the best sites on Grelb (RIP!!!) apart from us of course, and that "Meg Ryan" site, and... well, erm, anyway!!!! The site we're talking about was a site by a bloke called Sam Kington and the actual site name of this site which in this site resides was called "Mung"!!!! And it was a clever little proggy which loaded webpages and translated it using wierd filters- what was really clever was that the links would also go through the filter!!! Then that disappeared, and we couldn't find any equivalents on tha w3!!! (Which was really annoying as we were wanting to an equivalent on our site allowing you to translate webpages into Doddering Git's "k3Wl wAy33 oV sAy1Ng tH1nGzZz!!1!!", and we couldn't find any code to rip off!!!!) Until now, that is!!!!! The "Dialectizer" also processes all your webpages into cockney, Swedish Chef, and so on... It's apparently done by some bloke called Samuel Stoddard!!! Hmmmm..... http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/ == Look In- Literally!!!== Do you remember the young persons TV magazine "Look-In"!??!?!? Well, you commemorate those years, when the "Tommorow People" and "Magpie" was really happenin' (!!!!), in future by looking into a little lazer beam when you need some money!!!! This will be because someone's developed a decent way of having a retinal scanner built into those funny "hole in the wall" bank machines!!!! So they'll recognise it's you from your eyeballs when you "Look In" to it!!! Only prob- getting a new PIN is easy, getting a new eyeball is a bit more diificult!!!! http://www.yahoo.com.au/headlines/080998/technology/905259602-3691913139.html == The start of 'GatesGate'?!?!?! == What with the business with Bill Clinton, it seems no-one's safe, even the mighty Bill Gates!!!!!! Micrsoft are apparently "troubled" by a new unofficial "expose" book that details a whole load of allegations like bugging competiters, dirty business practices, and oddly enough, no sex orgies!!!! Faced with this obviously disgusting and depraved book, MS might actually *not* be suing!!!! "When there is a book that is so full of inaccuracies and falsehood, do you only bring more attention to it by filing some sort of legal action?" they say... http://www.amcity.com:80/sanjose/stories/090798/story4.html == Oi!!!! You're barred!!!!! == Imagine John Wayne going to the town Saloon after hard day's shooting guns and foiling cattle "rustlers"... He gets a "bourbon", and sits down in the "Internet Consoles" section of the bar to download some wholesome family photos!!! (Well, he's John Wayne, you wouldn't expect him to be downloading hardcore porn, would you?!?!?!?!?) Then as soon as he sits down in front of the compute, Phil Grant from Eastenders appaears on the screen and goes: "Oi!!!!! John Wayne!!! You're barred!!!!!!!!!!!!!" John Wayne goes "Awww, sucks!!!!!!", and walks out of the saloon, a broken man!!!!!!!! Sounds far-fetched?!?!? Well, you would be wrong!!!!! Because this week a cowboy was barred from the Internet!!!! A business "cowboy", that is!!! http://www.thestandard.net/articles/news_display/0,1270,1644,00.html == Another y2K prob- fundie terrorists!!!! == Well, even if the Y2K problem doesn't end all civilisation as we know it and so on, then there might be problem from people who think it'll end all civilisation as we know it!!! As mentioned before, some of loony US survivalist types are thinking that the Y2K is definately the absolute certain, absolutely no doubt about it. this time definately it's it, that "meteorite" scenario was really wasn't it, no this is really it, end of the world!!!!! (See issue 4...) Well, it looks like some of the more militant types who actually use their weapons might get wound up enough by this millenium bug to shoot and blow up things!!!! I bet the programmers who programmed old mainframe systems with 2 digit years in the dates didn't quite see this coming!!!!! http://www.charlotte.com/0907terror.htm == Displays for 'vein' people!!!! (Doh!!!!) == Did you know that there might be a connection between the stuff that goes through your veins might have a connection to a spiffy technology advance in screen technology this week?!?! Well, the stuff in your blood apart from the blood-cells is called "plasma"!!! And oddly enough this week, advances have been made in "plasma" computer displays!!!!! Is there any other connection?!?!? Er, I don't so- but I thought it sounded good!!!!!! http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/1025news/plasma.html == It's for Ya-hoo!!!! (DOH!!!!!!!) == You might be one of the many people who have a got an old PC working as a Linux box... Now, have you ever looked at it and thought: "I wounder how that big box would work as a mobile phone?!!??!?!" Well, now you can find out on this site devoted to Internet telephony on Linux boxes!!!! If you see "Sid", tell him!!!!! (Oh no, hang on, that was "Gas" wasn't it!??!?!?) http://voxilla.org/ I notice there's a whole loada sites ending in "illa"!!! What if Cilla Black launches a web browser!???!?! Would it be called "LorraLorraCilla"?!??!?!?!?!?!?! == MTV stage their own 'hack'!!! == Well, if I was to report all the "big name" websites that got hacked and "naughty" things written all over it, I wouldn't ever get a flippin' issue finished!!! But this is a little exception!!! One morning MTV's website suddenly had "JF was here" plastered all over it!!!!! JF is the initial of a famous dude in a famous hacking crew, so quite a few people said "Aha! MTV's been hacked!!!!" I bet you can guess what's coming next!!!!!! Yep, it was actually an "ironic" "hoax" "publicity" "campaign" thingy, and was a complete made-uppie!!!!! My, how we laughed!!!!! Well, we did- it seems not very many other people were impressed, especially real-life hackers!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14914.html AntiOnline not too pleased judging from this response!!!! Mind you, I find the bit where they accuse MTV of glorifying hacking a bit amusing!!!!!! http://www.antionline.com/SpecialReports/mtv/opinion.html == ZipperGate zippers!!!!!! == Now this is really funny!!!!!!! As you might know, certain "documents" about what the President "did" were put on the Internet in a rather clever publicity move by that Starr bloke (No relation to Ringo!!!!). Unfortunately the people who always keep going on about the morality of the "Prez" have also been the ones who have been pushing the "CyberSitter" type software which filters out all the nasty porno and "unconventional" ideas.... Yes, guessed it, the software filters out those "Zippergate" documents on the web!!!!!!! I think the phrase here is "poetic justice"!!!!!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14950.html == Museum of Questionable Medical Devices!!!! == Have you ever had a strange medical device inserted up your rectum?!?! Well, I haven't either- look, I was just asking!!!! Anyway, you find out about more strange medical devices at this fantastic site!!!!! http://www.mtn.org/quack/index.htm == Online 'sit-in' at the Pentagon!?!? == Now this is interesting!!!! Some combo called "Electronic Disturbance Theater" were protesting about something... (Presumably the high levels of boredom caused to the American people by a certain "investigation" into whether a politician told made-uppies and had a bit on the side, both of which are presumably new territory for politiicians!!!!!!!!!!!) Anyway, they did this by using a "java" program to do a "sit-in" on the Pentagon website!!!! http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/14931.html == Several unimportant people shout about nothing really interesting!!!!! == Phew!!!! The phrase "storm in a teacup" could have been invented for this absolute non-story!!!! But I'm not talking about President Clinton now!!! Some people have been complaining about the state of news://alt.digitiser !!! Apparently the newsgroup devoted to the UK Teletext "mag" Digitiser has got a large "noise-to-signal" ratio, contains a lot of chit-chat which is not really relevant to Digitiser, and has the odd people flaming back and forth!!!! Well, for most older Usenet hacks like me, it was a cause for celebration, as those were all the old cliches of an alt.* newsgroup, and it would mean that after many months it was finally an established newsgroup!!!! But some of the "newbies" have been thinking that the newsgroup is "dead" or something ridiculous like that!!!! Of course, it's in a bit of a quiet period because it's between Uni terms, and so a lot of the regular Digi fans don't have access to email, ut matters seems to have come to a head at the end of last week when some person called "zygotes" sent an email to an awful lot of people saying he "deleted" the newsgroup!!!!!! Well, I didn't notice any difference at Deja News!!!!!! It later turned out to be a bit of a mess-up, and "zygotes" apologised, but the kerfuffle, a few people announced the group was dead and that they were leaving, and then "contraversial" journalist Stuart Campbell wrote a "outspoken" message saying he was leaving as well, blaming messages by a couple of people who had left the newsgroup long ago!!!!! To be honest I can't what all the fuss is about!!!! You "headless chicken" types really ought to relax, and take up Transcendental Meditation, like that young chap Willie Hague!!!! Zygotes mk 1: "I'm 'hard'!!! I can delete newsgroups!!!!!" http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/text/zygotes.txt Zygotes mk 2: "Ohhhh, I'm so sorry, I can't delete newsgroups after all!!!!" http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/text/zygotes2.txt Stuart Campbell mk 1 on alt.digi: "I think it's one of the more pleasing newsgroups on Usenet - it's popular and dynamic, and reasonably often sees some genuinely interesting and intelligent discussions about games topics. I certainly think it was worth getting it created." http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mrdaveo/features/stuiv.htm Yes, I know, Dave, I didn't include the whole frameset!!! Here it is: http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mrdaveo/670.htm Stuart Campbell mk 2 on alt.digi sucks: "We tried to give Digi readers a forum to have fun talking about Digi and games and stuff generally with Digi writers and fellow readers, and got mostly a load of irrelevant juvenile drivel, with the few worthwhile bits coming mostly from people who've now been driven away by the weariness of ploughing through all the shit. Therefore, I'll be joining Uncle Biffo in sodding off and leaving you all to shout it out amongst yourselves." http://seniordads.home.ml.org/features/citizen/text/stucampbell.txt Now my tupenny worth... It seems to me that the group didn't die because of any crap messages or general irrelevance, because you get that in nearly any flippin' newsgroup!!!! It looks to me like the newsgroup's just died merely because enough people have believed it to be dead!!!! I haven't seen any appreciable drop in quality or otherwise in the messages, but suddenly everyone's talking like alt.digi's dead and the suddenly the number of messages drop like a stone!!!!! If I were the "coroner", I'd say alt.digi has just died of "mass hysteria"!!!!! Mind you, with the college terms now starting. I wouldn't surprised if we get a couple of old faces back going "Duh, what happened?!?!?!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE END!!!!! ... For now!!! This text and stuff is (c) 1998 HOUSE OF SENIOR DADS ,