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The Weekly Something or Rather - Vol 1. #1
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"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!
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Until next time --- Alex Swain (swain@enigma.rider.edu)

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