========================================== The Weekly Something or Rather - Vol 1. #1 ========================================== "For those of you who don't get out often, and drink too much damn coffee too..." NOTE: Not necessarily WEEKLY! (don't ask...) December 8, 1994 I think this world may be a little too overpopulated. Its just impossible to come across something new these days. Its all variations of things already created. With 250 million people in this country, and half of them brushing their teeth regularily, there's no way i'll be able to develop a new method of brushing that hasn't already been done and thats just fine because maybe the old methods are just fine and everyone out there has their own little style of brushing even though it may not be as good as someone elses but thats okay as long as the job is done right? Sort of inspired by James Joyce who actually wrote 57 pages of text without one of these ---> . <--- or one of these ---> , <--- or even one of these ---> ; <--- and you know that book was Ulysses which was a pretty famous book if you ask me. He didn't even use PARAGRAPHS or anything like that...However, since i'm more educated than that, I prefer to use punctuation and other symbols that most people use improperly; for example:....hah hah....This whole computer world is blowing my mind. But I really don't want to tread on it cause it sort of blows my mind.. Well, anyway. I find it sort of astounding how much information one can access in under five minutes. CAFFEINE. What a beautiful topic. It breathes life into us, it makes us work hard when we don't want to, its makes us slow and lethargic and makes our hearts beat unsteadily. It even gives us headaches when we don't get enough of it. What a pal. So its 3am and well, i've got an urge to read more about it. So I ride over to the university computer center and make a nice 110kbaud connection to the Internet. I type in caffeine and five seconds later (its 3am remember) I get a list of 24,000 references to caffeine. I connect to a Web site that specializes in caffeine and coffee. I download a 60-page text about "making proper coffee drinks" and print it out. As its printing, I connect to the University of Alabama and view a picture of the computer center's coffee machine. Its set to update the picture every five minutes. At 4am they had a full pot of what appeared to be pretty strong coffee. Next technological breakthrough: SENDING me a cup of that coffee. Onward.... Someone out there is wet-dreaming. The problem lies in people utilizing technology thats only in its infant stages. Prime Example: Video through the computer. Does it work? Well, did anyone see that Rolling Stones broadcast on the Web? What they did was have a live concert available to anyone with an Internet account, an Mpeg player, and an interest in shitty animation and sound. Yes, it was WEAK at best. Ten frames a second (film is 24, video is 29.97) playing speed, and the sound, it sounded like a pc- speaker through a distortion pedal. So, you ask, why the HELL did they do it? Probably to attract more people to their (in my opinion) cheesy-washed-up and primarily DEAD brand of "music". Ok, calm down. Anyway, real computer dorks don't have time to leave their rooms to go out and buy a CD. Incidentally, my connection to the Net is through a Sun supercomputer (read: fast). Most people watched the stones at 5 frames-per-second; ugh. How can we use technology that the inventors themselves are dissatisfied with? Who knows. And now after this Cyberpunk this-and-that crap started surfacing....: Those virtual-reality games that provide choppy vector-animation, pitiful redraws, and worse, lack of even VIRTUAL Reality. Everything is so "virtual" these days. Anyone with a leather jacket and a PC is a "cyberpunk" and any 35 year-old businessman that downloads obscene photos is a "hacker". Before you know it, anyone that uses their corporate phone card to make business calls is going to be considered a "phreak". Hah hah...Oh whatever...Next... The media plays the computer public like a bunch of idiots. How many times have you come across an article about "technology" or the (gasp) "Information Superhighway" that pissed you off? I'd bet a million bucks at least once. The media really has us by the balls. There are more computer illiterates out there than literates, and when the media (who really doesn't know shit about computers) starts addressing topics, it just gets more confusing. No point here except that we're all chumps and I hate Time magazine. Hats off to Wired though, they're alright. Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, its like trying deliver a baby thats only five months ready. Sure, you can do it, but the baby isn't going to work right. Woah, bad analogy. Deadlines, Deadlines, must type stuff. We shouldn't introduce things to the public until they WORK. We have such a bad reputation for releasing things too early. Whether its babies (?), cars (that accelerate whenever), or green tomatoes (again, ?), we push things to get them out and prey the money pours in. Microsoft Windows, now here's a good example. It was released four years ago and it still sucks. Can't anyone fix these General Protection errors? Shit. So when you release a video card thats (in THEORY!) 16.8 million colors, you should also have a human that can SEE that many ready to be marketed. Yeah, 16.8 million shades of red, green, and blue. So whatever company invented that virtual-reality game must have test-marketed it along with a punchbowl full of acid. Cause the only way anyone is going to believe that crap is if they're tripping. I digress. (You're welcome...) Next on the agenda....Why are feds knocking at my door? Guess I should lower the wattage of my transmitter. Next Issue: A lot of text with no particular relevance to anything. Week of December 8th -- Places I like to visit. ----------------------------------------------- 1. University of Cologne - http://www.rrz.unikoeln.de/themen/graphik For all those Mpeg enthusiasts, this place has got a bunch of really cool animations; REALLY cool. It also has lists of other places to get animations. I think you can gopher to it. 2. (A coffee site) - http://www.infonet.net/showcase/coffee From here, there is nothing you can't find on coffee and caffeine. I'm not kidding. This site is awesome. 3. University of Illinois - Weather Computer gopher://wx.atmos.uiuc.edu They're currently installing a web site which you can use, but its still under construction. Once its up, this will be the coolest place on earth to check weather. The web site offers 24-hour continuous weather animations of the whole earth. So Web to it if you can. Hey, its better than watching tv. 4. Electronic Frontier Foundation - gopher://gopher.eff.org (or Web to it) The coolest site in the whole world. ================================================= You know what I hate? People overusing Disclaimers. I'm convinced its an ego thing. What am I saying? Copy, print, edit, re-edit, re-re-edit, encrypt, decrypt, burn, erase, eat, or do whatever with this file that you want; I DON'T CARE! ================================================= Until next time --- Alex Swain (swain@enigma.rider.edu) --END--